


glass-child

by oh_fudgecakes



Category: Tokyo Babylon, X -エックス- | X/1999
Genre: (sort of), BUT ITS TOO LATE, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, Drowning, Dubious Morality, Earthquakes, Emotional Manipulation, Existential Crises About Falling In Love, Falling In Love, I am attempting to come up with a better summary for this thing, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Imprisonment (mentioned), M/M, Rough Sex, Slow Burn, Very Weird Aftercare, YOU PLAYED YOURSELF SEISHIROU, all i have is that this is about two dumb lonely men being dumb and learning to love, and also breaking each other's hearts along the way, goddamn it all, i played MYSELF writing this, seishirou eventually learns that violence is not the way, there is a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 14:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5932018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_fudgecakes/pseuds/oh_fudgecakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Seishirou broke Subaru and one time he didn't: Seishirou practices the art of <i>pique assiette</i> with fragments of a human soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

Rosy morning light streamed into the darkened clinic, alighting on sharp edges and shattering over the walls in a brilliant mottle of scintillating flecks. The shards scattered crystalline on the floor were alight with a reflected glow, like the dust motes gilded gold and gently aloft in the dewy light.

In the centre of it all, Seishirou sat crouched on the floor, strangely child-like.

 _He looks younger without his glasses,_ was the first thing Subaru thought when he walked in on that unordinary sight. The top two buttons of the man's charcoal grey shirt were undone, and a salmon tie was draped over the back of a nearby chair along with his white veterinarian's coat. His legs were folded haphazardly beneath him in a way that looked uncomfortable, but he seemed not to notice, absorbed as he was in single-minded concentration.

He held in one hand a small glass penguin, the other carefully handled a pair of forceps. With a small _chink_ , a glass fragment slid into place. Eyes never moving from the glass, the forceps was placed on the floor by his side. A small searching sweep of his palm found him an open tube of clear silicone glue. A bead of pearly liquid on the glass, a slow patient wiggle of the fragment into the fast-drying adhesive, and he reached for the forceps once more.

The glass door closed behind Subaru with a barely audible sound.

Amber eyes snapped to him with a quick turning of a sharp jaw. Without the shine of glass and the distraction of wire-frames over his nose, Seishirou's eyes were sharp— sharper even than the glass scattered around him, sharp enough to cut oneself on. Sharper still was the piercing single-mindedness of his gaze, a concentration so absolute it pinned Subaru to the spot in wide-eyed, petrified silence and made him feel transparent.

For the first time, Subaru realised that those eyes were too cool a yellow to be the warm amber he'd always thought they were.

The gaze shifted.

It was as if he had slid suddenly into focus, like those piercing eyes were suddenly looking _at_ him rather than _through_ him. And just like that, Seishirou softened, and the moment was broken.

"Subaru-kun," he greeted softly, "You're here early. It's not even remotely near opening time."

Seishirou attempted to move his legs and winced in a way that seemed almost surprised.

"I must be getting old," he lamented jokingly as he began to gingerly shift his legs into a more comfortable position, "Have you eaten? We can go for breakfast before I come back to open the clinic."

"Oh no," Subaru protested, "You don't have to take the trouble to—"

"It's no trouble at all. Just wait over there and don't come over here; I don't want you to cut yourself on the glass," stepping over the shards, Seishirou retrieved a small broom and dustpan and began to sweep all the pieces up, "I should have done this just now and worked at a table instead of sitting on the floor," he said with a quiet laugh.

Seishirou tipped the shards into a small metal dish and placed it on the counter.

Figuring it was now safe to venture into the clinic, Subaru made his way over to examine the broken figurine. The glass was cool in his palm, and the glue was just dry enough that the shards wouldn't slide out of place with gravity or with handling. So precisely placed was each piece and so minimalist was the appliance of glue that unless he looked closely to search for the telltale cracks spiderwebbing within the glass, he wouldn't have known that it had been broken in the first place.

"Seishirou-san has very delicate craftsmanship," he complimented shyly.

"Thank you," Seishirou tossed the glue and forceps into a drawer and slid it shut, "When I was younger, my mother used to keep a sack of broken things for little craft projects like this. This here, however, was unfortunately an accident rather than a deliberate act. Poor Penguin-san."

Looking down at how his fingers were unable to meet around the girth of the glass, Subaru was abruptly reminded of how Seishirou's fingers had completely dwarfed it. A feeling he couldn't identity flickered across the forefront of his consciousness, but it was gone before he could delve any deeper into it. He carefully set the figurine back onto the countertop.

"Deliberate?" he asked instead.

He spared his glove a passing glance for any excess glue that may have leaked from the cracks— _there was none; Seishirou's craftsmanship was perfect_ — and looked up to see the silk tie sliding from the chair, unwinding in a long trail of petal-pink.

"Have you heard of _pique assiette_?"

"No," he admitted, "never."

Moving to stand in front of a large silver planter, Seishirou looped the tie around his neck and began to tie it off in a series of smooth, efficient movements.

"It's something like mosaic, except instead of using tiles, you use pottery shards— or anything really that you can get your hands on. My mother would take a hammer to the things in the house she didn't like and rebuild them into vases, tabletops, household objects," with a final tug at the ends of the silk, the knot tightened, "Put them all together with glue, fill the breaks that don't match with grout, then file the sharp edges down, and you have something infinitely more beautiful than what it had originally been. I'd never seen a boring vase in my life until I moved out of that house."

Seishirou picked up an abandoned mug of coffee and drained it. He made a face; it had probably been cold for a long time.

"Well," he said, grimacing a little as he set the mug down, "That's enough of that. I'm sure you didn't come here to hear me talk about my dear old mother."

"Oh no, it's fine," Subaru said, very sincerely, "I think Seishirou-san's mother sounds like an amazing woman." He smiled a shy little smile, "I would like to have met her."

A pause. 

There was a familiar gleam in Seishirou's eye. 

“I’ve never brought a boy home to my mother before,” he said slowly, mischievously.

And despite himself, Subaru felt a blush creeping up his neck at the implication in his tone.

"I—I didn’t mean— I just meant that Seishirou's mother sounds like a very interesting person— and I— I—"

Seishirou's booming laughter filled the room, and Subaru all but withered under the weight of his acute embarrassment.

"Hai, hai!" Seishirou teased mercilessly, "I think my mother would have approved very much. She and Hokuto-chan would have had a great time working out the wedding plans. _Ne_ , Subaru-kun?

" _Sei_ shirou-san!" he yelped, scandalized.

The older man turned away to retrieve his coat and slip his arms through the sleeves.

"Jokes aside," he murmured, tone suddenly serious once more, "I think…"

He turned around with a determined look on his face, pulling the white coat over his dark underclothes with an air of finality.

"… I still have a long way to go until I can prove myself worthy of such a promising young man as Subaru-kun!" he pressed the back of his hand to his forehead and wiped away an imaginary tear, "After all, I am but a poor ungainly veterinarian…"

 _"Seishirou-san!"_  

The door swung shut behind them as they left for a nearby cafe where Hokuto was no doubt waiting impatiently. As Seishirou twirled the keys around a finger, humming a merry tune, Subaru could not help but feel inexplicably unsettled, inexplicably like he had run out of time to discover something very important.

In the darkened clinic, the glass penguin sat on the counter, still missing a wing and half of its face, shards on the dish beside it scattering flecks of rainbow light over the tabletop.

 

* * *

 

_'For instance... breaking your arm like this and breaking a glass cup, is there a difference?'_

— Tokyo Babylon, Vol. 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the prologue. I expect that there will be another five chapters, followed by an epilogue. Updates will be sporadic.


	2. propriety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Subaru returns to Tokyo after a year in Kyoto, and runs into Seishirou. As he recovers in the aftermath of their meeting, he has to make some choices about what he wants to do with his life, in particular, whether retaining the approval of his family is more important to him than looking for the man who killed his sister.
> 
> Please heed the tags: in this chapter, there is violent imagery and the aftermath of violence, implied dub-con, depiction of an unhealthy romantic relationship (duh), reference to a somewhat unhealthy family environment (past).

When they meet again for the first time since his sister passed, he is seventeen, on the precipice of his eighteenth year of existence.

It is during that chilly transition from winter to spring that he visits Meiji Shrine to perform a ritual cleansing, in preparation for the coming Setsubun. It is a simple job for which his presence is more a courtesy than a necessity. The purification rites are finished in less than an hour and he settles down for lunch afterwards near Yoyogi Station.

He'd forgotten how just busy Tokyo is after being in Kyoto for so long, what with the salarymen and the students and commuters and shoppers all out in the streets. Around him, there are schoolgirls and schoolboys from the nearby schools littering the cafe, every one of them fighting to be heard over the din. The beleaguered waitress leans close to him to hear his order, haggard and harried, and his eyes slide away before he can unwittingly get an eyeful down her blouse.

Just like that, their eyes meet through the glass separating the coffee-shrouded interior from the crowd outside, green to white and hazel-gold.

Just like that.

Around them, Tokyo continues on, a sea of people ebbing and flowing in a ceaseless tide of love and life and loss. The crowd parts around the single man standing in the middle of the pavement, a shock of pitch hair and pitch clothes. No one gives him a second glance. They don't see the gloves of blood and his crimson shirt-front. They don't see _sakura_ and murder trailing behind him like ghostly coat-tails. They don't see the lung tissue clinging to his sleeves—the fragments of a broken heart lingering under his nails from where he'd held it, still-beating, in his palm.

The waitress draws his attention away with a polite prompt of _'sir, your order?'_ and apologising, he stands. The clutter of haphazard chairs and tables hamper him as he fights his way to the door, politeness forgotten. _He_ could disappear all too easily into the crowd and every moment lost is a second's head-start given. He breaks through the last of the crowd— stops before the door, surprised to find Seishirou waiting on the other side. Their eyes meet again in silence, one figure in traditional white _shikifuku_ and the other dressed like a modern businessman entirely in black, facing each other through the doorway.

The single, deliberate step he takes across the threshold feels oddly significant.

 

* * *

 

It takes three days, but they find him eventually in a darkened hotel room somewhere in Yoyogi. The sheer curtains billow lazily like the dresses of hanged brides, draft spurring the fan to spin in slow, silent circles. Light filters in through the open window, casting shifting tones of corpse-grey over the furniture, over the body lying prone on the carpeted floor. Strangely dreamlike, an august crane glides into the room in a slow arc, lands on one of the bedposts as if to complete the surreal tableau.

The crimson is the first thing to lurch out at them through the shadows, the bloodstains blooming over white skin and white fabric. At first glance the red seems to be all there is to him, so pale is he that he blends almost perfectly into the pastel decor. Only the subtle play of light and shadow over his body betrays the loose sprawl of his limbs, the scraps of torn _shikifuku_ barely clinging to him in places.

Shock and horror are quickly put away as they sweep up his broken-doll limbs, wash his lifeless form of bodily fluids, and wrap him in a bundle of clean sheets. Arrangements are made over the phone—nothing a sufficient sum of money cannot solve—and he is immediately whisked back to Kyoto on the next train. He sleeps for the next week or so, besieged by injury, trauma, and fever in quick succession.

The first person he sees upon waking is his grandmother, sitting by his bedside with her head tilted to gaze out of the open shoji. The dewy smell of flowers in the crisp morning air has slipped into the room, creeping into delirious fever-dreams of rough but strangely elegant hands. Beside him, expression vaguely mournful but all the more distinguished in her sorrow, the edges of his grandmother's face are feathered into a rare softness by the quiet light of spring. On occasions such as this, Subaru often finds himself wondering at the delicate beauty, slightly worn by age but still traceable, on her face. The harsh lines of her austere expressions usually masks her gentle features.

"You're awake. I am glad on it."

A short distance behind them, the light streams through the long spokes of her wheelchair, casting spidery-thin shadows over them both. When she finally turns to look at him, she retains the strange sorrow, the uncharacteristic gentility. He feels a vague surprise beyond the haziness of his fever; the stern face usually returns when she realises that she is being watched.

"Your birthday passed while you were sleeping," she says quietly, "Happy eighteenth."

He is reaching out before he realises it, a single outstretched hand clutching at the blurry form of his grandmother in a horrifically childish gesture. Quickly, he allows it to drop to the futon by his head. He turns his face away, already feeling chastised even though his grandmother has not spoken a word.

A long moment passes. Outside, birds chirp in the hanging boughs of flowering trees and a breeze murmurs through the grass. A servant is walking down the stone path outside, the _clip-clop-clip-clop_ of traditional _geta_ distant and receding away into the courtyard towards the kitchens.

Quiet, a rustle of heavy _kimono._

His grandmother's hand settles uncertainly over his. After a brief moment of hesitation, her fingers curl slowly around the side of his palm. Eyes closed, Subaru wonders if this is just another fever-dream. The chances are high. It is more likely a dream than reality, he thinks as she bends over him, pressing her forehand to the back of his hand.

"Child," she whispers, heartbreak stark in her voice despite the almost negligible volume, "My sweet child."

She brushes her lips briefly over his gloved knuckles.

"You never asked for this."

He slips back into fever-bright dreams of the morning his grandmother had taken him aside in his tiny white shikifuku, so frightfully tall next to a boy as young as he'd been and cold in a way people rarely were towards children. She hadn't bent down to talk to him as a tall ojisan had once when he'd gotten lost during a school trip. No one ever did, except the teachers at school. Instead, she had clasped her hands before her in a manner intimidatingly regal, overlooking the pond from where they stood under a slender willow. A short distance away, a servant waited on them with luggage in hand to leave for Tokyo.

 _A child's only duty is to receive, until such a time that he is able to transcend childhood into adulthood,_ she had said, _thereafter, his duty is to give in return for what he has received._

Turning, she had swept a trailing sleeve over the lotuses.

 _The tides of all great rivers are pushed by those behind it. Japan is waiting for you to take your place behind her and to urge her towards greatness, because of who you are, because of who you were born to be. From today onwards, you are no longer allowed to behave childishly_.

The quiet disapproval in her eyes was clear with every crinkle in his attire, every scrape gotten from playing in the gardens with Hokuto that morning. He had scrambled to arrange his _shikifuku_ as she turned away, expression carefully neutral while he attempted to tidy himself to somewhat more acceptable degree. The words that went unspoken during that time was all the harsher for their silence.

 _You are not a child, Subaru-san,_ she continued, once he was done, _It is now your duty to give everything of yourself, and to ask for nothing in return._

That morning would mark the last time she had called him her child, and the last time Hokuto would ever hold his naked hand.

 

* * *

 

He returns to the world outside of dreams to whispers like _kidnapping_ and _assault_. The hotel in question is highly apologetic for an unknown crime. Apologetic in the vaguest sense of the word. A more accurate description would be 'acute horror at having offended a family as powerful as the Sumeragi.'

Subaru can admit that their horror is not entirely unfounded. Grandmother is _boiling_. Silently. When she speaks with the representative, she is short and cold. The terrified man apologises endlessly.

His apologies would probably work better if he actually knew what he was apologising for.

The clan, down to every last servant in the house, is oddly quiet. Even those who know nothing of what happened know that _something_ happened and, catching the simmering rage directed in the vague direction of _'that man'_ , tread the house carefully in wait for the annual clan-meet, surreptitiously sneaking him sweets once they catch the first glimpse of his bruised and bandaged form. Sneaking because grandmother had blown a fuse when she'd seen the amount of presents they'd been spoiling him with _(Subaru-san is not a child to be coddled!)_ , even though he suspects that she knows the sneaking, and is just turning a blind eye now that everyone is not being quite so blatant about it.

If she's suddenly started going easy on him, then she is probably more emotional about this than even _she_ knows.

An aunt he has never met brings in a lacquered box of artisan _mochi_ one day, fussing endlessly over him and pausing every now and then to pat his cheek like he's eight and not eighteen. This is something he has gotten used to during the past week or two, disorienting and confusing as it had been in the beginning. She is one of the few that actually seems to know... somewhat the basic gist of what happened, and he can't help but think that she'd be an invaluable asset in espionage if she could just extricate herself from her gossip-mongering for a moment.

"They say the victims always blame themselves, that they begin to defend their attackers. The victims of these sort of unfortunate… accidents, they always think that deserved it or that they invited it," she natters away, "They didn't, of course. Nor did anyone else."

A servant knocks at the door, and the aunt takes the plate of fresh _anpan_ from her with a conspiratory whisper that Subaru cannot make out. He dreads the prospect of yet _another_ plate of sweets to eat in the near future. He doesn't think he's ever really had much of a sweet tooth anyway. If he had, he'd grown out of it years ago.

The plate goes on the makeshift bedside-table of stacked up presents. There is more lurking in the rest of the house, Subaru knows, because the servants come at the end of every day and take them away to prevent clutter. He thinks there must be enough stored in the house by now to feed an entire elementary school for a year. He turns part of his attention back to the incessant chatter of the lady bustling around him.

"It wasn't your fault, or anyone else's for that matter. No one is really responsible for these sort of things," the woman continues, tucking the blanket around his shoulders, "Except the sort of twisted people who perpetuate these crimes in the first place. But that's different. They're _different_ from us."

A pause.

"Or maybe the hotel," she acquiesces, "But that's different too."

He smiles then, so bitterly that he almost surprises himself with it. He thinks that it would surprise her too, but she doesn't see it. No one does.

 

* * *

 

They are sitting over tea together, legs folded beneath them in perfect _seiza_ , when he brings it up. His grandmother looks at him like he's gone mad, like he's sprouted a second head.

"I would like to move back to Tokyo," he tells her calmly.

 _"Subaru_ -san!" she chides, setting her tea down, "You know that I cannot grant you permission to move back to Tokyo. It's just not proper. It's just not _done!"_

"I am moving back to Tokyo," he amends himself, because she seems to think he's asking for permission, and takes out a folder, "The necessary papers are all here: my travel details, accommodation details, contact details. Everything has been settled. I just thought I might inform you."

He closes the folder and pushes it across the table.

Grandmother simply stares for a moment, as if it might disappear if she stares long enough. It's a lovely spring day; he looks out over the gardens as he waits for her to collect herself. She reaches for her cup, and takes a long sip of tea. Her hand is shaking. He hears her breathing in the calming scent of the tea for a long moment before she sets it down, looks up at him, "You're serious about this."

He looks at her in the eye.

"Yes."

Grandmother sits backs, rubs a hand down her face. She looks old, tired in a way he's never seen.

"You…" she begins, "Subaru-san, you _know_ that the clan-head has traditionally lived here in the Sumeragi family house. You _know this._ All the clan-heads in the past, including myself, have lived here in Kyoto."

"Is this tradition?" he challenges, "Or are you just keeping me here?"

 _"Keeping_ you here?" she repeats incredulously, "What do you mean by—"

"Did you think I hadn't noticed?"

She falls silent, shocked at his tone. He would feel bad for it, but he is tired and hurting and he's sick of _tradition_ , he's sick of _propriety_ , he's sick of it all. She had always told him that he had no time to be a child, so he would appreciate if she would stop treating him like one.

"When we get calls from Tokyo now, you always send the junior _onmyouji_. You think I don't notice that we're getting calls from Tokyo, but I do. I know we're getting more and more jobs in Tokyo but you won't send me because— because of what? What did you think I would do if you let me go back to Tokyo? Did you think I couldn't be _trusted?_ Did you think I would go _running back to him?_ Disgrace the family name? Did you think—"

"What I _thought,"_ Grandmother cuts him off harshly, hoarsely, "Was that he would _find_ you and _hurt_ you! And I should _never_ have let you go back to Tokyo, even on Meiji's request, because _I was right!"_

She stops suddenly, breathing a little harder. Her eyes are brighter than usual, gleaming in the light from the open _shoji._ For a moment, all that he can hear is the echo of the shame he'd blurted out angrily, unthinkingly, the shame that no one knows, the shame he keeps silent, deep inside. And now she knows.

 _"I was right,"_ Grandmother whispers.

Subaru looks away as she turns her face, dabbing discretely at her eyes with a _kimono_ sleeve. Her wheelchair is pushed against the wall three feet away. A servant had to help her out of it, and will have to help her back into it. She cannot leave of her own accord to compose herself in private, and he has not forgotten that it's his fault.

Finally, he hears the _clunk_ of her ceramic cup being set on the table. When he looks back at her, she is opening the folder and flipping through it, face composed even though the remnants of tears glisten on her aged cheeks.

"I would prefer if you lived closer to the train station," she says shortly, "This apartment is much too close to Kabukicho. Are you sure it's safe?"

She turns the page.

"I also notice that you have not included a _fax number_ , or a landline for that matter. I expect that you'll send them to me as soon as you've settled in and received these details," her eyebrows shoot up as she gets to the bank statement, "And I _will_ be having someone transfer more funds to you. Subaru-san, do you really expect to live on so little? I assume you'll be eating out since you've never been able to _cook."_

He looks down at his lap as she continues to look through the papers, huffing, muttering to herself and occasionally informing him sharply of her disapproval regarding some choice or another.

"Thank you, obaa-san," he whispers.

"No need to thank me," she snaps, "I will _not_  let it be said that the head of the Sumeragi is living in _squalor."_

He lets her fuss.

 

* * *

 

It is only after they have hashed out the details of his living conditions, and he is leaving the room that she calls out to him, hesitantly.

"Subaru-san."

He stops at the closed door, but does not turn around.

"Subaru-san," she says again, quieter, _pained,_ "The hotel, the police, the family, they all believe that he ambushed you at Yoyogi, dragged you away by force… but he didn't have to, did he?"

He says nothing.

"You went with him willingly, didn't you, Subaru-san?"

A pause.

"He... touched you. No one else knows, but I could tell when I found you. Did you... I need to know if it was consensual."

He slides the door open, turns to face her.

"Oyasuminasai, obaa-san," he says, and closes the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

After one of the family cars drops him off at Kyoto station a week later, he goes to the vending machine and buys a pack of Mild Sevens. He smokes his first cigarette leaning against the wall of a dirty alley outside the station, beside an overflowing dumpster and a crusty used condom discarded on the mouldy concrete floor. He tilts his head back against the wall, watching the smoke curl from his mouth and up into the air like the greying strands of his grandmother's hair.

There are many things he's done to disappoint her, to disappoint his family. There are many things he has done that hurts her, pains her.

He closes his eyes and smokes the cigarette down to the filter.

In half an hour, he watches the rice-fields rush by him in a golden blur, listens to the pistons of the train thrusting on and on, bearing him away from Kyoto, away from the familiar landscape of his childhood, away from the many things he's believed in, the many rules he has followed unthinkingly for all his life. Tradition. Piety. _Propriety._ There's nothing _proper_ about what he wants, what he's chosen to do, what he is doing now. For a long time, it had been enough to stop him, but not anymore. He can't help but remember that this was what Hokuto-chan had always wanted for him, and he wonders if she would be proud if she could see him now.

The train bears him toward Tokyo, Babylonian city of debauched neon lights, and he goes with his eyes wide open.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, Subaru has been living in Kyoto under his grandmother's watchful eye since Hokuto's death. He has not been in Tokyo since, until Meiji Shrine requests a ritual cleansing for Setsubun (also known as the bean-throwing festival) which takes place early February every year.
> 
> Kabukicho is Tokyo's red-light district. Many of the shops there are under the "protection" of the yakuza. From what tourist forums say, it's perfectly safe to walk there at night, but its a little raunchy and traditional old ladies like Lady Sumeragi would definitely not approve. It is roughly a five-to-ten minute walk from Shinjuku station.
> 
> Seishirou should make a more prominent appearance in the following chapters. Updates will be sporadic.


	3. duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three years after moving back to Tokyo, Subaru has to address the issue of his long-standing, unofficial engagement to a presentable woman from a presentable family. Seishirou is not happy about this. He is also a manipulative, cruel asshole.
> 
> Please heed the tags: in this chapter, there is violent imagery, depiction of an unhealthy relationship, emotional manipulation, and at the end, violence (in the form of asphyxiation) and dub-con.

It happens in a way almost identical to the last— through the glass, on a busy street in Tokyo, with the lunchtime crowd milling about outside and _his_ black-clad form tinted slightly blue by the window pane. In his black coat and his white collared shirt, he looks just like a million other people in Tokyo, but Subaru could never fail to recognise this man, even despite the dark sunglasses obscuring his eyes.

There’s a lot that can happen in three years. More than four hundred million people are born, more than a hundred and fifty million die. People live and people lose. Children get older. His twenty-first birthday has passed just recently, but his grandmother is now over eighty years old. Two months ago, she had suffered her second stroke after the one induced when she’d spelled him, catatonic and barely breathing, back to her side. Her first had taken her legs. According to the doctors, the next will take her life. These are circumstances that has brought him to where he is now: in the restaurant of a particularly upscale hotel, over a particularly expensive lunch, across a particularly beautiful woman from a particularly influential family.

Her name is Michiru. They had played together as children and although he hasn’t seen her since he was six, she has grown into an elegant young woman in an immaculately arranged _kimono_. She does not have any magical talent of her own despite coming from a long line of powerful _onmyouji_. She is also his _fiancee_ in all but name _,_ the woman his family expects him to marry, the woman their families expect will bear his children, the woman who will help him carry on the Sumeragi name. Both of them are aware of this.

Despite the weight of this meeting, Subaru still finds himself rising almost instinctively from his seat.

“Sumeragi-san?”

It has often been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting to see different results. For three years, he has been looking ceaselessly for this man without result. But today, _today,_ he has done something different, hasn’t he?

“Is there something wrong?”

He blinks, turning to Michiru. She looks concerned, a little worried. He looks back out at Seishirou. His eyes are still fixed on Subaru, hands in his pockets. He does not look surprised to see the woman sitting across from Subaru. There can only be one reason why Seishirou has decided to appear again.

He sits back down.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees a smirk as the black-clad figure outside the window leaves. He resists the urge to get up, to run after him. He’s better than that, and if Seishirou finds this meeting important enough that he’s appeared after three years of absence, he will be back.

Still, he barely listens to anything Michiru says after that. He can’t concentrate on her words no matter how he tries; his mind wanders repeatedly back to the appearance of his sister’s killer. Michiru notices but doesn’t call him out on it. After they finish dessert, she makes her excuses and heads back to her hotel room, reaffirming the date of next meeting as she goes. She will be sightseeing in Tokyo and its surrounds for about a month. The next time he’s seeing her is early next week.

After she leaves, he goes out onto the street and summons a _shikigami._ It flies one round about the hotel, and upon its return, swoops down and flutters agitatedly around his hands. There is no trace of the Sakurazukamori’s magic except for what the man had left on him so many years ago. Seishirou had wiped his magical trail.

Subaru clenches his fists. There’s nothing he can do for now, but he believes that Seishirou will be back, because if that was his last chance…

Seishirou _will_ be back.

He _has to._

 

* * *

 

He sees neither hide nor hair of Seishirou until the night before he’s next set to see Michiru.

That night, he returns home to find his wards slightly disturbed. Something that shouldn’t have been there had broken into his apartment in his absence. Upon crossing the threshold, he is immediately confronted with the uncomfortable feeling of blood magic permeating the house, a _very familiar_ blood magic. He reaches for his _ofuda_ as he advances slowly into the living room, on guard for any attack. When no assault comes, he cautiously sets about looking for curses that may have been laid on any household object. He finds none, which raises the puzzling question of just _what_ the source of the magical stench is.

As he enters his bedroom, his question is answered. On his bed is a single sprig of _sakura._ He can feel the blood magic that it had lived off, taste the screams of the souls on which it had fed. The petals that fell when Seishirou casted his spells in the past had never smelled like this. Those had smelled purely of his magic, which had barely hinted at the violence that he can feel now. What he can feel now is a concentrated extract of all the _evil_ he could faintly taste in Seishirou’s magic. This… this is a sprig directly from _the Sakura,_ the one the Sakurazukamori lived to serve.

He only barely refrains from throwing up in the doorway.

From that moment, his life turns into a nightmare. He sleeps on the couch, but is still haunted by the lingering presence of that single _sakura_ sprig. He had purified and purified and purified his apartment but the terror, the horror, the anguish of the souls that had screamed from those blossoms refuse to leave his dreams. He goes to Michiru’s hotel the next day, still feeling unclean. As he sits at one of the tables, waiting, he looks out of the window. Seishirou has not bothered to turn up again, and he’s not sure how to feel about that.

Then Michiru arrives, smelling of _sakura,_ and he breaks a plate jumping to his feet.

“Sumeragi-san!” she cries, as the waiter who had led her to the table immediately stoops down to pick up the scattered ceramic shards, “What’s the matter?”

There’s nothing sinister about the scent, per se, but it seems too much of a coincidence that she suddenly smells like this when she had smelled of perfectly generic, albeit expensive, perfume the last time they had met. He sits down, swallows, and tries to look composed.

“Nothing,” he says numbly, “Nothing at all. Did you change your perfume, Michiru-san?”

She looks pleasantly surprised.

“Why, yes,” she says, and her delight shows despite how hard she’s trying to contain it— she’s _beaming_ at him like he’d just proposed marriage, “I had gone shopping yesterday, and unexpectedly found a new perfume amidst my shopping bags. I certainly didn’t buy it, but I figured one of the stores had accidentally packed it in.”

His heart feels like it’s dropped right out the bottom of his stomach, but she goes on, obliviously.

“It looked expensive, so I thought that I ought to return it,” she continues, “But there was no label, and I couldn’t figure out which store it had come from. Then, when I tried it, I found that I really liked the smell; classy and elegant, but still traditional— that’s what _sakura_ smells to me anyway. I just feel that Lady Luck has been on my side lately, you know, Sumeragi-san?”

She looks up at him through her dark lashes, smiling.

He nods and makes the right noises at appropriate intervals throughout the appetiser and the main course, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s still numb with horror at the _implications._ Seishirou had _hunted Michiru down_ to plant the perfume in her bags. Either that, or this is a message that he _knows_ where she is currently living. She doesn’t notice this time. It seems his ‘observant’ comment at the beginning of lunch had delighted her enough to let her guard down slightly. She’s no longer analysing him, in fact, she’s looking down at her lap a lot, a pleased flush on her face. She’s… she’s a good girl. She’d make a good wife, even if Subaru doesn’t have room in his heart for anyone else.

In the middle of the main course, she stands.

“Please excuse me,” she says politely, “I’ll just be off to the ladies’ room for a bit.”

After she leaves, Subaru sits back in his chair and covers his eyes with his hand. He doesn’t know how to tell her that she may be in danger from a serial killer with magical abilities. He looks out of the window, but Seishirou still isn’t there to smirk, gloat, or simply just to stare at him menacingly. He’s not sure what to make of that. Seishirou had always seemed like the sort to want to see his own work panning out.

Michiru returns from the ladies’ and resumes her meal. He smiles shakily at her, and picks up his chopsticks again. It takes him a few moments, but he eventually realises that something is wrong, that something is _very, very wrong_. Her scent…

_It smells like blood._

His head snaps up, and he notices what he hadn’t noticed before. A single _sakura_ is tucked elegantly into the coiffure of her hair. He can see the blood magic on it. He can see the _shredded souls_ , the magical violence. God, it’s a blossom from the _Sakura._

He stands, chair clattering to the floor behind him, and snatches the flower from her hair. Michiru drops her spoon in surprise, but he ignores her. He applies a little burst of purifying magic. Instead of disintegrating like it had yesterday, the flower dissolves into dark red blood that splatters violently across him. Opposite him, Michiru jerks back with a small gasp, her eyes wide with horror.

“Michiru-san,” Subaru says, very quietly, in the silence that ensues in the restaurant, “Where did you get that flower?”

“A man,” she replies, horrified, “He was standing outside the ladies’ room. I spoke to him briefly and told him I was here to see my _fiancé,_ and he put this in my hair, said I should look my best.”

“Ah,” Subaru says, “Black coat? Blind in one eye?”

“He was wearing sunglasses,” Michiru answers, “But he was wearing a black coat, yes.”

Subaru nods once, jerkily.

“We need to go,” he says, and grabs her arm. She follows without protest, still looking shell-shocked. “Charge the bill to her room,” he tells the doorman as they leave. The man nods, his eyes fixed on the blood splattered across Subaru’s shirt-front. He doesn’t say anything. Subaru heads over to the lifts and jabs at the ‘up’ button. He needs to set wards around Michiru’s room. If Seishirou comes for her, _god,_ if he comes for her—

A _ding._

The lift door opens, and Subaru crowds Michiru into it. As the door closes, she seems to regain her senses.

“Subaru-san,” she says sharply, and he’s conscious of the sudden switch to his first name, “What is happening? Who was that man? Why did he enchant that flower with _blood magic?”_

Of course. She had descended from a family of white _onmyouji._ She would definitely recognise the look of blood magic, even without any magical abilities. He puts a finger to his lips, and she frowns, but remains silent.

“Have you heard of the _Sakurazukamori?”_ Subaru asks, and her eyes widen.

“The man who killed Hokuto-chan.”

 _Hokuto-chan,_ not _your sister._ Michiru’s dark eyes are pained, _angry._ Subaru suddenly remembers that they had played together, all three of them, before the faithful trip to Tokyo that had left him with scars on his hands. Grandmother had kept him and Hokuto away from any outsiders after that. She and Hokuto had been friends, _much_ closer friends than she had been to him. They had been almost inseparable in their early childhood. He had forgotten about that.

“Why?” she asks, “Why is he coming after you now? I thought he’d left you alone since Hokuto-chan was killed.”

“Because of you,” Subaru answers honestly, and Michiru frowns.

“Why does that matter?”

Subaru shrugs.

“Because he— because I— I don’t know. I don’t _know._ We have something of a history. It’s complicated.”

“He’s in love with you.”

Subaru recoils.

“What?” he blurts, _“No.”_

“You’re in love with him,” Michiru guesses.

Subaru closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Michiru-san,” he begins, but she cuts him off.

“That’s alright,” she tells him, nodding solemnly, “I’ve had crushes on girls before.”

“You’ve— you’ve _what?”_ Subaru exclaims, “I— That’s not— I’m not _in love with him!”_

Michiru nods, but she is clearly thinking. She doesn’t believe him. _God,_ he’s not sure he believes himself sometimes.

Luckily, the lift arrives at her floor before either of them can say anything more. He doesn’t even know what sort of a misunderstanding he’s gotten himself into, but first things first, he needs to ward her room. She leads him down the hallway to a room near the end. She produces a key and unlocks it. He steps in front of her before she can open it, just in case, but when he opens the door nothing happens. He moves slowly into the room as she waits at the doorway. There’s an aura of violence somewhere in the room, and he’s pretty sure he knows what the source is.

“Where’s the perfume you found?” he asks.

Michiru leads him into the bathroom. Sure enough, the malevolent presence is concentrated around a bottle of perfume on the counter. Just the bottle, not the actual perfume. There’s no curse, just the lingering aura of the _Sakura._ With a short incantation, he releases a purifying spell. The bottle begins to _ooze_ blood. There’s a sharp intake of breath from behind him. He turns the tap on and runs the bottle under it before putting it back on the counter.

“There wasn’t any curse on it,” he tells a silent Michiru, “The man who put it in your bag just left a little bit of magic on it, probably as a message. You can continue using it safely. I purified it.”

She looks at him like he’s crazy.

“I’ll throw it out,” she says, and then goes back into the bedroom. She opens the mini-bar and pulls out a bottle of whisky. “Would you care for a drink?” she asks, “God knows _I_ could use one.”

He sits down in the plush armchair by the window and lets her pour him a glass even though he doesn’t drink very often. He sets a ward around her room as she neatens up in the bathroom. It will be enough to keep Seishirou out. When she returns, her _kimono_ is perfectly folded and every strand of hair is perfectly pinned once more. She pours herself another glass and sits in the armchair opposite him. They drink together in silence for awhile.

“You loved him,” she says after several drinks. It’s not a question.

“Yes.”

“Do you love him still?”

“No,” and it’s probably the alcohol, but he relents right after, “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

She shrugs. She doesn’t look sad, or even surprised.

“When we were children,” she tells him quietly, “I idolised Hokuto-chan. I wanted to be her. I wanted to be around her, to follow her in whatever she did. She was everything I wanted to be and wanted to have. Later on, I realised that I probably had something of a crush on her. She was strong, daring, subversive in a way I never had the courage to be. I still hope to be like her, but I’m not. I’m nothing like her.”

He says nothing. He has nothing to say.

She puts her drink down and stands up, comes around the table.

“You look so much like her, even now,” she says miserably, and kisses him on the lips. She tastes like expensive whisky.

Subaru pushes her away and smiles sadly at her.

“I’m not Hokuto-chan,” he tells her gently.

“I know,” she says.

She returns to her seat and pours herself another glass.

 

* * *

 

The next day, he goes down to the hotel early and waits in the breakfast hall. He’s told the doorman to bring Michiru to his table when she comes down for breakfast. They have not arranged to meet today, so she isn’t expecting him, but Subaru feels the need to talk to her after their half-inebriated conversation the night before. He needs to assure her that they can still make things work, even though both of their hearts are with other people. His grandmother would be crushed if it didn’t work out, and he has no doubt it would be the same for Michiru’s family. This is what he needs to do. This is his duty to his family.

The breakfast hall is on the second floor, and he’s elected to sit in the designated smoking area, an open-aired terrace that overlooks the main street. He’s looking down over the railing, keeping an eye out for Seishirou, but he still hears when the chair opposite him is drawn out, when someone takes a seat opposite him.

“Ohayo gozaimasu, Michiru-san. I hope you slept well,” he greets politely, turning back to her from the window.

Opposite him, Seishirou tilts his head slightly. There’s the beginnings of a smirk about his lips.

“Ohayo, Subaru-kun,” he returns, “I slept very well, thank you.”

He stops himself before he can jump to his feet, and instead reaches very slowly for his tea. He takes a long whiff of its calming fragrance, and sips carefully at the hot, sweetened liquid. A waiter comes by and sets a cup of coffee by Seishirou’s right hand. He sets the cup back on its saucer as Seishirou takes his first sip.

“What,” he says finally, “do you _think you’re doing?”_

Seishirou just shrugs, exuding the same careless charm as always. He looks a little older, the lines of his dimples a little more pronounced when he smiles, his voice a little deeper, rougher from years of cigarette smoke. Other than that, though, he looks exactly the same as he had the last time they had met. He’d be thirty soon, but who could tell?

“Just felt like catching up with an old friend,” Seishirou says smoothly.

“We’re not friends.”

Seishirou has the _nerve_ to feign hurt.

“You wound me,” and then, his smile turns slightly cruel, “You seemed very agreeable the last time we met. I had truly thought you considered us at least friends, if not _more_.”

Subaru’s teacup begins to rattle in its saucer. His hand is shaking.

“How dare you,” he whispers, because he knows what Seishirou is alluding to.

“Ah,” Seishirou says, “Did you not enjoy yourself? I know I did—“

Before he can stop himself, he’s grabbed his cup and stood up, fully intending to throw its contents over Seishirou’s smug face. A forceful grip around his wrist stops it before it can happen. A third of his tea goes over the table, but none of it reaches the man opposite him.

“Careful, Subaru-kun,” he murmurs, “The tea is hot. You could burn someone with that.”

He wrenches his arm away and sits back down.

“Why are you really here? Don’t pretend that you’ve just decided to _show up out of the blue,_ not after three years of nothing. Why do you feel the sick need to make sure my life will never return to any semblance of normalcy after _what you’ve done to me? Why are you here?”_

By the end, his chest is heaving a little with each breath even though he hasn’t been shouting. Seishirou doesn’t say anything. Just looks at him for a long while as he tries to catch his breath. He reaches again for his tea, takes a long sip. His calm has already long been shattered, but he can still try to regain the illusion of composure, even as his teaspoon rattles noticeably against the sides of his cup.

“And why are _you_ here, Subaru-kun?” Seishirou asks him. Subaru shoots him a scathing look.

“Michiru-san—“

“No,” Seishirou cuts him off flatly, “Why did you come back to Tokyo three years ago? What did you want?”

Subaru doesn’t reply.

“I don’t understand you,” he says in lieu of an answer, “Is this supposed to be a threat? Is this your twisted way of saying that you know where Michiru-san is staying?”

“I’m not going to do anything to your _fiancee_ ,” Seishirou says bluntly, “That would make it too easy for you, wouldn’t it?”

Subaru closes his eyes. “Please tell me what about _any of this_ seems easy to you.”

Seishirou just smiles.

“What I’m saying,” he continues, as if Subaru had not reacted at all, “Is that you came to Tokyo three years ago for a reason. You can go ahead with the engagement plans. _I’m_ not going to do anything. Why _should_ I do anything? You can live a peaceful life with your _fiancee_ with five kids and a dog. I don’t really care. But, of course, you’d be living that life in _Kyoto_ , wouldn’t you?” And here, he leans forward just a little, rests his chin on the palm of his hand, tilting his head. “What I think,” he whispers, in an almost conspiring tone, “Is that you already knew that, but you didn’t expect me to just let it go, did you Subaru-kun?”

Subaru clenches his fist slowly against the table top. Seishirou looks unbearably smug.

“What was it that made you come back to Tokyo those years ago?” he asks, innocently.

The answer lies heavy in the silence between them. _To find you._ And as if hearing the unspoken answer, Seishirou smiles pleasantly and leans back in his chair.

“Make a choice,” he says, and stands up.

Subaru stands up with him, as if he could stop the man and make him take back the dilemma he’s dumped in Subaru’s lap. It’s true that there had been some part of him that expected that Seishirou would not let this go. He was partially right, because why else would Seishirou be here again after three years of being gone? What he had not expected was for Seishirou to be so creatively cruel. He doesn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to him before this. Seishirou has always delighted in being cruel to him.

“Ah,” says a quiet voice, “Sumeragi-san?”

It’s Michiru.

Her hair is tied back in a simple ponytail and she’s not wearing any makeup. Instead of the traditional _kimono_ he’s grown accustomed to seeing her in, she’s wearing a simple cream turtleneck, jeans, and a pair of ballet flats. She looks brutally, honestly, herself. He sees the moment her dark eyes stray to Seishirou, the moment of realisation. Her eyes widen and her lips shape into a small ‘o’ as she recognises him, probably from when she’d met him outside the ladies’ the day before.

_“Sa—“_

Subaru slaps a hand over her mouth before she can complete the word that would damn her. _Sakurazukamori._ Despite everything, he had never wanted to see her come to any harm. Seishirou’s smile widens into something vaguely menacing as he gently grips Subaru’s wrist, pulling it away.

“Please don’t mind Subaru-kun,” he tells her silkily, “I’m not one of those men who believes that what a woman has to say is of no importance.”

“Seishirou-san,” Subaru murmurs warningly, and Michiru’s eyes jump to him. She seems almost surprised that the Sakurazukamori would have a first name. To her credit, she collects herself relatively quickly and steps forward, tilting her chin up.

“ _Sakura,”_ she says, “You gave me one yesterday, outside the ladies’ room. That was you, was it not?”

“It was.”

She nods once, firmly.

“Thank you for the gift,” she says, “And I see that you’ve met my _fiancé_. He’s the man I mentioned yesterday.”

Seishirou tilts his head, as if in surprise.

“Well, what a coincidence,” Subaru manages not to react when Seishirou puts a hand on his lower back, “I do believe Subaru-kun and I have known each other for almost our whole lives. Nearly fifteen years, if I’m not wrong.”

“Oh? Please, don’t allow me to break this reunion up,” Michiru says politely, “Would you like to have breakfast with us— Seishirou-san, was it? I’m Michiru. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Seishirou’s eyebrows lift slightly, as if she’s surprised him.

“Likewise,” he returns smoothly, and there’s no menace in his tone or expression, “But far be it from me to interrupt breakfast between a happy couple like yourselves. Subaru-kun, Michiru-san. Excuse me.”

After Seishirou leaves, Michiru sits down shakily and puts a hand over her eyes.

“God,” she says, _“_ That was— _god.”_

She gestures for him to sit. He does so, numbly lighting a cigarette as she calls to a waiter for a cup of coffee. She rubs vigorously at her face for a moment before straightening and looking up at him.

“What is it now?” she asks bluntly, “Will we be going ahead with the engagement?”

It was never really a choice, Subaru knows.

“No.”

“Alright,” she says simply, and that’s it. She doesn’t ask, doesn’t cry, doesn’t even react. She just opens the menu, skims it shortly, and then calls the waiter over again to place her order. He comes with her coffee. That done, she reaches for the sugar and puts in precisely two teaspoons before stirring. “I’ll have to figure out what to tell my family,” she tells him, almost as an afterthought, “And you ought to as well.”

She looks up, catches the look on his face, and frowns, “Is something the matter?”

_Is something—_

“Yes,” he chokes out. _God,_ what is he doing? He doesn’t know how she can be such a _rock,_ when he’s— when he’s done what he’s done. _What is he doing?_ How does Seishirou constantly make him do these things, make these choices? He leans his cigarette against the ashtray, puts his head in his hands, “I don’t know what this will do to my grandmother,” he tells Michiru honestly as she wipes up the tea he’d spilled earlier, when he’d tried to throw it in Seishirou’s face. The waiter comes with her breakfast, and she tucks in as he _breaks_ on the other side of the table.

 

* * *

 

He smokes through the last of his pack as she finishes her breakfast. Afterwards, he exits through one of the backdoors and finds himself in the alley by the hotel. There’s a vending machine full of cigarettes, so he pops in the appropriate amount and jabs the button for a pack of Mild Seven Lights. A man is standing in the shadow cast by the machine, smoking. He doesn’t have to look to know who it is.

“I heard you called off your engagement,” he says, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Subaru retrieves his cigarettes from the machine, puts one between his lips, and digs around in his pocket for a lighter.

“Fuck you,” he mumbles around his cigarette, and the Sakurazukamori _laughs,_ reaches over to light it for him. He’s a little light-headed from how many he’s smoked today, but after the day he’s had, he figures he deserves this. He watches the cigarette burn down with every hard inhale. Halfway to the filter, Seishirou finishes his. He drops the stub on the floor and grinds it out with the heel of his shoe. Suddenly, there’s an elbow against his throat, as Seishirou slams him against the wall.

There’s a common cliche in movies that has always jumped out at him. The villain closes a hand around the throat of his hapless victim. The dying man chokes out his last words, and then suffocates. What these movies always get wrong is that it’s not possible to speak without air. If your victim can still speak then you don’t know what you’re doing.

 _Seishirou_ knows what he’s doing.

And so Subaru says nothing as he’s lifted off the ground, says nothing as deft fingers undo his belt buckle, says nothing as Seishirou brings him off right there, in the dark alley behind the hotel. There’s a strange mix of anger and triumph in Seishirou’s violent handling of him, and his fingers scrabble uselessly at the arm against his throat as he comes, silently, through the pain. This. _Pain._ Yes, this is something he can deal with. First, there’d been training, then came the jobs and the injuries, and finally came Seishirou. His life has been a blur of _hurt_ ever since. The intangible agony of the choices he’s had to make, the things he’s done wrong, the ways in which he’s failed— that’s been nearly unbearable to him. This localised pain is more familiar, almost a relief next to that.

The elbow holding him up by the throat vanishes _right_ before he passes out, and he crumples to the ground immediately. He watches through teary eyes as expensive leather shoes take a step backwards, hears as if from underwater the _click-whoosh-sizzle_ as Seishirou lights himself another cigarette. He takes a hard draw— flicks the ashes over Subaru’s prone body.

“Ah,” he says, “I’d forgotten what a pretty picture you make broken.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will admit that Michiru’s characterisation took a few unexpected turns as I was writing her. She was originally supposed to be the stereotypical upper-class damsel, and then suddenly she had a crush on Hokuto and refused to be cowed by anything. I almost took those sections out multiple times, because I felt that I was giving her too much character for one-time calefare. Then I figured that characters shouldn’t need important plot reasons to _not_ be heterosexual, and a woman shouldn’t need to be a central character to _not_ be a weepy damsel whose life revolves around a man.


	4. morality i.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the events surrounding the breakdown of Subaru's engagement, he is meeting with Seishirou regularly. They have some pertinent issues to hash out in the interlude before the Final Year, but neither of them deal well with confrontation. At all.
> 
> Please heed the tags: In this chapter, there is depiction of an unhealthy relationship, asphyxiation (via strangulation as well as submersion in water), rough sex, dub-con since Subaru is in a really funky head space, cigarette burns— and some really weird aftercare. Don't ask. It is what it is. There is also mentions of past imprisonment, and Setsuka, if that bothers you.

Once he figures out how to do it, it’s relatively simple. The metal wire, he buys from a nearby hardware store. There’s a power source conveniently built into the wall below the window, which he sticks one end of the wire into. The other end, he winds around the metal sill a few times.

That done, he slaps the _ofuda_ on the metal sill with some vicious satisfaction. It’ll amplify the charge pretty painfully, but he lives on the twenty-second floor— no one else comes up here. He settles down to complete the paperwork for the last police case he’d assisted in, and eventually falls asleep on the couch, papers strewn over the coffee table.

He is woken by the tingle of a familiar magic, and the even more familiar odor of cigarette smoke. It’s twilight out, sky purpling and fading quickly into a deep indigo. The first thing he sees when he raises his head is the bleary outline of his _ofuda_ , pointedly cleansed of the spell he’d imbued it with. A man sits smoking by the window, wire idly twirling itself into an unexpectedly realistic stag in his hand.

“That was a little rude,” Seishirou says mildly, “One would almost feel unwelcome.”

“Fuck you,” Subaru spits.

“Patience, Subaru-kun,” the end of the wire tucks itself away into the figurine as Seishirou sets it aside, standing, “We’re getting there.”

That had been the third time.

The first time had come as a bit of a shock. He had definitely not expected to see Seishirou again within a year of their last meeting, let alone within the _week_. Since then, though, Seishirou had come and gone semi-frequently, but without much pattern. Sometimes he’d come through the window in the middle of the night, and sometimes he’d appear out of a crowd in broad daylight. Sometimes he’d appear to Subaru several times within the week, and sometimes he’d disappear for months on end. Subaru had asked about the sporadic intervals once, not really expecting an answer, but Seishirou had unexpectedly indulged his question.

“I travel for work,” he had said candidly, before his smile turned slightly cruel, “It’s not always in Tokyo that a person offends a very important someone.”

He remembered what Seishirou did, of course, remembered what he was. He could never forget. However, that didn’t mean unwelcome reminders did not upset him still.

“Get out,” he’d said.

The sex that time had been particularly violent.

Tokyo carries on as she always does, flawed and pitiless, but still possessing that strange element of degenerate beauty. The hatred, grief, and desolation of her occupants spill constantly over into ugly manifestations, spiritual disturbances that call for his attention. It often falls to him to clean up those messes, and so, perhaps more than anyone, he knows how bittersweet life here can be. Yet, the sight of Tokyo at night still fills him with a strange fondness.

He thinks it might be the same for Seishirou as well. Back then, before, he remembered the conversations they sometimes had after a particularly ugly job. He remembers that look on Seishirou’s face as he’d said it, that look of bittersweet fondness— _still, I really love this Tokyo_. He knows now that nothing Seishirou had said in that year had been spoken with complete truthfulness, but those quiet conversations, those intimate moments, _those_ had perhaps been the closest Seishirou had come to honesty during that year.

There are moments now, too, where he feels they approach something resembling understanding— in silence, bodies silhouetted against the neon lights and cigarette smoke. In those moments, it’s like his whole body vibrates with the presence of this person beside him, this person that he has never had cause to love, but a person he is immeasurably fond of still.

“Why are you here?” he’d asked during one of those moments, “What changed?”

Seishirou had shrugged.

“You did,” he’d said.

“And?”

“And I was curious,” then, again with that cruel smile, “There are still so many ways left to break you, Subaru-kun. I had not previously realised that.”

The truth is that Seishirou seldom lies in their current life. He is brutally frank, because he knows that the truth can sometimes be more painful than deception. Perhaps back then, there had been a need for lies to keep up his veneer of normalcy, but underneath that persona, Seishirou is a surprisingly truthful person— even if he’s not particularly forthcoming regarding his motivations. He deflects when asked about himself, only answering when he knows the truth will hurt most.

Subaru has long confronted the fact that he sometimes prefers being lied to. He has learnt to be careful about what he asks.

 

* * *

 

A man stands in the shadow of the alley opposite him, smoke curling slowly from the end of his lit cigarette. He allows his client, the unfortunate developer of a haunted construction site, to wring his hand for just a moment longer, and only speaks to decline an invitation to dinner. When he finally manages to extricate himself from his grateful client, he goes to join the man in the alley.

“Thanks,” he mumbles as the man reaches over with a lighter.

He is allowed to enjoy his first draw in silence.

“Graves under the construction site?” Seishirou asks disinterestedly.

“Earthquake,” Subaru corrects, “A particularly bad one from last month. There were people inside when the building collapsed.”

Tokyo had always been prone to earthquakes, but…

“The earthquakes have been getting stronger recently, don’t you think?”

Subaru lets his eyes flick momentarily up towards Seishirou. So he had noticed it as well. The man in question leans back against the wall, cigarette balanced between his lips and his hands in the pockets of his black trench coat. He has his sunglasses on. Subaru briefly wonders if he’d come from, or is going to a job, but cuts off that thought before it can properly take root.

“Looks like the Final Day is drawing near.”

Subaru shrugs noncommittally, saying nothing, but that doesn't seem to faze Seishirou.

“I find myself looking forward to our battle,” the man continues, laughing shortly, “I can’t imagine Subaru-kun being capable of killing someone— even me.”

Subaru frowns.

“I’m not killing anyone,” he says.

A pause. Seishirou turns to him, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

Something about that rubs him the wrong way.

“I’m not like you, Seishirou-san,” he bites out, “I don’t take lives. In this fight, I’m supposed to _protect_ them.”

Seishirou just laughs.

“I don’t much care about the fate of this world,” he says, absently tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette, “But I wonder if you’ve realised what it means for me to destroy a _kekkai_. How many hundreds, perhaps _thousands_ would perish in that single blow— have you thought of that?”

Subaru tenses, but says nothing. What could he say to that?

One broad palm against the wall, beside his ear. When Seishirou steps closer, he just closes his eyes helplessly and allows it to happen— allows Seishirou to tilt his chin up, allows Seishirou to part his lips with a gentle thumb, allows Seishirou to slide a hand into his hair and lean in close.

“You could try to save them from me,” Seishirou murmurs against his lips, “But you can’t save everyone. The only way you could do that is to kill me, so that I do not destroy any _kekkai._ ”

He turns his face aside, frowning.

“Stop it.”

“Still, you refuse to kill. You’d rather let me take innocent lives than get your hands dirty. Why?”

He puts one hand against Seishirou’s chest, as if to push him away, but the man resists the half-hearted gesture.

“Out of some misguided sense of moral uprightness?”

“I said _stop it.”_

“Out of some deluded sense that you’re _better than that?”_

He puts both hands on Seishirou’s shoulders and _shoves._ This time, the man allows himself to be moved, stepping back with another one of his patronising laughs.

“But you’re just lying to yourself, aren’t you?” he chuckles derisively, “We both know why you won’t kill me, and it’s not because of something as noble as _morality._ ”

Something in him snaps.

The slap echoes in the empty alley.

There is a moment of stillness. Neither of them had expected that.

Then, suddenly, there’s a hand in his collar, hauling him painfully around. He is backed into the wall with an elbow to the throat, head cracking against the concrete. He blinks hard as Seishirou leans in menacingly.

“Sei—“

Seishirou backhands him across the face. The elbow leaves briefly, only to be replaced with a strong hand, lifting him up a good two feet off the floor. His voice dies in his throat, suffocated.

 _“Shhh,”_ Seishirou whispers dangerously, “Be quiet now.”

Half-conscious, he tries to kick Seishirou in the crotch, but the man must have expected that. He is standing between Subaru’s thighs. He beats weakly against Seishirou’s arms and chest to no effect. The man is laughing disbelievingly.

“Oh, Subaru-kun,” he says, “You have become so _entertaining.”_

 _Seishirou-san_ , he tries to say, reaching up to grip the wrist at his throat, but he has no air with which to speak. His vision is darkening around the edges. He can vaguely feel sensation fading from his extremities. Seishirou had done this to him before on several occasions, but never this long. His fingers loosen, arm falling down to his side. He is going to die. Seishirou is going to kill him.

 _Seishirou-san_ , he thinks, before everything goes black.

 

* * *

 

He wakes on the floor of his living room. Seishirou is sitting on the couch in his shirtsleeves, reading one of the few books he keeps in his apartment. He looks up when Subaru makes an unsuccessful attempt to sit up.

“Ah,” he says, putting the book down, “You’re awake.”

That’s all the warning he gets before he is being dragged by the hair into the bathroom. The tub has been filled with water.

“Seishirou-san—”

“Be quiet.”

He is brought down with a kick to the back of his knees, then Seishirou is shoving his head underwater. He tries to scream, but it only comes out as a muted gurgle, as an eruption of bubbles around his face. At this angle, he is completely helpless. He cannot even touch Seishirou. As his vision begins to darken once more, he instinctively begins to gulp down water. He can’t— he’s going to drown.

Just as he begins to lose consciousness for a second time, Seishirou yanks him up.

He retches. Water pours onto the floor, followed quickly by the remnants of his lunch. He is vaguely thankful that he’s been under-eating. He draws in a sobbing breath, but before he can even finish that breath, he is being shoved underwater again. Water in his airways. Water in his lungs. His struggles slow. He is pulled up, he vomits it out.

Seishirou grips him tightly by the jaw, slapping him nonchalantly a few times on one cheek.

“Don’t fall asleep now,” he says casually, “That would be rude.”

“Don’t,” he sobs, “Seishirou-san. _Don’t.”_

“Sorry,” Seishirou apologises insincerely, and shoves his head under again.

He struggles weakly until he can no longer muster the strength to struggle, holds his breath until his body reflexively begins to breathe against his will. Water rushes into his body. Seishirou lets him up again just when he thinks it’s over for him. The water comes back up the way it came.

A loud gasp, and then he’s being pushed back down again. The cycle repeats.

He can’t even think.

The third time, he only struggles for a moment before going limp, unresisting. It is only when everything begins to go blurry that his body takes over for him, fighting desperately against its apparent end. Seishirou brings him back up as his instinctual thrashing begins to die.

He retches one last time onto the tiles. This time, there is only water, bile, and tears.

He flops back into Seishirou’s chest, sobbing wordlessly with a senseless, animal pain. His gasps for air come short and frantic, but somehow it isn’t enough. He thinks he might be hyperventilating. He isn’t sure. He isn’t sure of anything.

“Shhh,” Seishirou soothes, “Deep breaths. Don’t cry, you’re only making it worst.”

 _Seishirou-san_ , he tries to sob, but he can’t even speak. There is no breath left in him.

“Deep breaths,” Seishirou says again, and shifts him to sit against his broad chest. A large, warm hand is rubbing soothingly at his back, a small comfort he can’t help but respond to. With a final hiccup, his breathing begins to slow.

A towel wipes gently at his face, the unoccupied arm curling around his back. He lets his head fall against Seishirou’s shoulder. His entire front is wet from his splashing, but the man doesn’t seem to care. He closes his eyes as deft fingers divest him of his soaked shirt and reach for his pants, feeling strangely hot and trembly all over.

The hand pauses on the buckle of his pants.

“Oh, Subaru-kun,” Seishirou chuckles, “You’re _hard.”_

His eyes snap open.

He is, _oh,_  he is.

Seishirou reaches down, but he slaps the hand away and scrambles out of the man’s lap. His back meets the side of the tub.

“Don’t touch me,” he snarls.

Seishirou moves away, hands up, eyebrow raised.

He tries to draw his thighs up protectively, but the movement only serves to remind him of the predicament between them. He needs. He needs so badly he’s shaking, needs so badly that he doesn’t even know what to do with himself. His body feels hot all over, hands trembling. He’s going out of his mind. He can’t— he needs—

Frantically, he begins to push his clothes out of the way. His hands are barely listening to him, his fingers clumsy and stiff. He can’t— He fumbles for so long that when he finally grasps himself, he can’t help but let out a long, high whine. He feels so hot, hot all over. He can’t think. Arousal has never felt like this. He screws his eyes shut and tries to bring himself off but— his hands— he can’t— he can’t come. His hands are shaking too badly to be of any use. He throws his head back against the rim of the tub with a desperate keen.

Seishirou reaches for him again, and this time he doesn’t resist. He lets Seishirou pull the rest of his clothes off, lets Seishirou arrange his uncooperative limbs. He sobs helplessly, bare thighs bent up on either side of Seishirou’s waist, as strong fingers curl around him.

“You’re beginning to hyperventilate again,” Seishirou tells him calmly, “I’m going to need you to breathe, Subaru-kun. “

He tries, but he can’t seem to draw enough breath. He begins to panic.

“Seishirou—” he sobs, “I can’t— I don’t— what’s— _happening?”_

“Adrenaline. It’s a normal response. Breathe.”

“Sei—“

“Breathe with me.”

He tries his best, which seems to be enough for Seishirou.

“That’s it.”

The hand grasping him begins to stroke. He shuts his eyes tight against the pleasure. It’s almost too much. His hands fly up to fist in Seishirou’s shirt.

“Seishirou-san,“ he gasps, “I can’t— I’m gonna—“

“Come.”

He tries to muffle his voice against Seishirou’s shoulder as his climax crests upon him. It carries him high, higher than he thinks he can bear. At the peak, Seishirou presses a finger into him, dry, and the pain of it— he throws his head back, cries echoing high and desperate against the walls. He's— he’s breaking _apart._

The tears come fast and furious after that. He vaguely registers the damp washcloth over his belly and between his legs, vaguely registers being carried naked out the door, vaguely registers the creak as Seishirou sits on the bed with him cradled in his lap. There’s a hand stroking through his hair, lips pressed to his temple.

The way Seishirou holds him, gently, _tenderly,_ like he’s something precious— it hurts. He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand that.

“Don’t—“ he manages through his gasps, “—treat me so _kindly_. If you’re going to hurt me, then _hurt_ me. I can’t— I don’t— I _don’t know what to do with this.”_

He loses himself in a fresh bout of slightly hysterical tears.

When it dies down, he feels abruptly exhausted. Everything seems so far away, as if he’s staring out at the world through a long, dark tunnel, disconnected from his own body. He can’t feel anything, can’t bring himself to care about anything. He thinks that if he could, he would feel something about the fact that the fingers in his hair have stopped.

He dispassionately allows himself to be moved out of Seishirou’s lap. He curls up numbly at the edge of the bed as Seishirou lights a cigarette, smoking it slowly, before standing it against the ash-tray on the bedside table.

Rough fingers fist suddenly in his hair. He allows Seishirou to move him, to arrange his body as he sees fit. When he’s flipped onto his front, he goes with it. When his legs are spread, he doesn’t resist. He hears, as if from a great distance, the click of a plastic cap. A cold gel is slicked around his entrance. Seishirou does not loosen him before lining himself up. He knows that it will hurt. He’s still too tight.

Seishirou enters him in a single, brutal thrust. His mouth falls open, but he doesn’t make a sound, not even when Seishirou begins to thrust violently in and out of him. He is vaguely aware that he’s bleeding. The colors around him dull further.

The thrusts slow, and then stop. The fingers in his hair tighten, pulling his head back, but he remains limp.

A pause.

Seishirou reaches for something by the bed.

He hears the sizzle before he feels the pain, a pain so deep it seems to radiate through his bones, shocking him unceremoniously back from his muted headspace. He is screaming before he can control it, spasming and bucking under the press of cigarette to blistering skin. Seishirou keeps him pinned through it all. He continues to twitch even after the cigarette leaves his skin.

“Don’t you know,” Seishirou whispers, “That it’s rude not to pay attention to the person you’re with?”

The cigarette touches him briefly right above the first burn. He lets out a short scream, more out of fear and shock than actual pain. Seishirou goes on to burn a line of shallower blisters up his spine, each burn perfectly spaced apart. By the end, he is writhing helplessly away from the pain, choking on sobs.

When Seishirou leans down, sinking teeth into his nape above the last burn, he can feel the wicked curl of lips against his skin.

 

* * *

 

Seishirou is sitting on the couch when he wakes in the morning, reading the same book he’d been reading the day before. Upon closer inspection, he realises that it’s a Japanese edition of _Chicken Soup for the Soul._ The book had been a strange and unsolicited present from a distant aunt, gifted to him when he’d been bedridden in Kyoto— bedridden, in fact, because of Seishirou. _Chicken Soup for the Soul._ He thinks he may cry.

The man looks up when he stumbles into the doorway, naked, pale, and limping. He can barely stand, and he hurts too much to put on clothes.

“You’re awake,” Seishirou notes, and runs a critical eye down his body, “You look terrible.”

Ten upon ten for brutal honesty. He does not much appreciate it this morning.

“—your fault,” he manages to whisper. His throat is as wrecked as the rest of him.

“That it is.”

Seishirou puts down the book and stands. He puts up only a token protest when the man scoops him up into his arms, carries him into the bathroom, and sets him on the counter. He feels fragile, like he’s going to shake right apart at any moment, and it probably says nothing good about him that instead of feeling angry at what’s been done to him, he kind of just wants to be held by the man who hurt him.

“I’m not wearing anything,” he does hoarsely protest, because that is a legitimate reason to resist being manhandled by a fully dressed man. His protest is ignored. Seishirou reaches up into the cabinets and locates a first-aid kit with a worrying ease. Subaru didn’t even know that he _had_ a first aid kit.

“This isn’t yours,” Seishirou tells him then, “I bought this from the convenience store while you were sleeping, because you didn’t have one. That’s very stupid of you.” He washes his hands before opening the box and producing a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a packet of cotton balls, and a pair of forceps. He sets them down, then moves Subaru to sit on the floor by the drain. “Turn around please.”

Subaru obeys, wincing as Seishirou gently washes his back with warm water. The burns down his back _sting_ under the spray, even despite the gentle setting.

Seishirou pats him down carefully with a soft towel, before retrieving the forceps and the alcohol-soaked cotton. He can’t help but remember the year of the Bet as Seishirou expertly sets about disinfecting the burns, applying a numbing antiseptic cream once he’s done. If Subaru closes his eyes and ignores his own nakedness, he can almost imagine the kindly Seishirou of his teens in place of this cold, hard man.

He can hear Seishirou pouring alcohol onto a new cotton ball behind him.

“Lie back and spread your legs.”

His eyes fly open. He turns around.

 _“Excuse me?”_ he demands.

Seishirou looks up, and raises a brow as he sets the bottle of rubbing alcohol down.

“You were bleeding yesterday,” he says, like it’s really that simple, “I need to disinfect you.”

The look in his eye seems to say _do as I say, or I will make you._ It is a look that Subaru is familiar with, and unfortunately one that he knows Seishirou will follow up on— and so he shuts his eyes, humiliated, and does as he is told. He endures the spray of water, the clinical hand between his legs. He keeps his eyes closed and his face turned away from the metallic click of forceps, tries to ignore the wet dab of cotton at his entrance.

Seishirou stands briefly to dispose of the cotton ball. When he opens his eyes, he can see that it is pink with blood. He turns away again as Seishirou returns to sit between his legs.

“Your skin is always so white,” Seishirou says absently, reaching for the antiseptic cream, “Like marble. You know most mammals synthesise the majority of their vitamin D from sunlight?”

Subaru does not reply, but that does nothing to stop Seishirou.

“Red does look so very pretty on you, though,” he continues, “I think that’s the best part about making you _bleed.”_

The sound of a screw cap being undone.

“I still remember the sleeves of my mother’s kimono.”

He tenses against clinical fingers, covered in a cold cream.

“She had very small, very red lips, and skin as white as snow. She loved the red camellias that grew in the backyard. She loved the way they looked against the snow, but she didn’t get to see that very often. That was why she always wore white to kills— because she loved the way that blood would stain her sleeves dark and crimson.”

Subaru frowns.

“Your mother—“ he begins hesitantly.

“Was the Sakurazukamori before my accession,” Seishirou confirms.

There had been a conversation a long time ago, a conversation about broken glass and shattered pottery, about a woman he had thought of as slightly eccentric, creative, but above it all, warm— _homely._ Subaru cannot reconcile that image he’d had of Seishirou’s mother with what he has just learnt.

He draws his legs shut as Seishirou pulls away.

“Why did she not get to see camellias often?” he asks instead.

Seishirou screws the cap of the antiseptic cream back on, and begins to put everything neatly into the first-aid box.

“I did not meet my mother until I was nine. I was born outside of Tokyo and raised by rotating roster of strangers in an old wooden house by the sea. I knew my mother was in Tokyo, but never really wondered about her, or particularly cared to meet her.” He closes the box with a firm click, and stands to put it back in the cabinets. “She lived in a traditional Japanese mansion that was strangely empty whenever I visited, but I knew that there must have been people coming in and out when I was gone, because there was a single room inside the mansion that my mother was not allowed to leave. It was a small, dark room where no light shone, surrounded by iron bars— that was where she had been kept for the majority of her life.”

Subaru’s eyes widen in horror.

“She loved me like she’d never loved anything,” Seishirou continues, dispassionate and unconcerned, as if commenting on the weather, “But I did not love her. I killed her with my bare hands and felt nothing. Her blood soaked the snow, the white silk of her kimono, the petals of the red camellia around her body. I still remember how her long black hair fanned out over the crimson snow. She was the prettiest woman I’d ever seen, but she was even prettier in death.”

“Stop it,” Subaru snaps shakily, sitting up, “What is wrong with you?”

Seishirou laughs outright— but he stops.

Subaru has long confronted the fact that he sometimes prefers being lied to, but there are times such as this that he remembers why that is so. Still, he takes Seishirou's hand when it is offered, and allows the man to hold him, just for awhile. They do not speak again of the argument they had in the alley. They do not speak of death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I initially outlined this thing, I assumed that all chapters would be around 3,000 to 5,000 words.
> 
> In retrospect, I must say that that was ill-planned.
> 
> It somehow did not occur to me that I would need significantly more words than planned to cover the some 5 years of continuous contact before the events of X. So here, have this 10,000 word monstrosity. I have split it into two chapters so that each one will be around 5,000 words. The second part of this chapter has already been completed, and should be up by tomorrow after I've given it a proper read-through.


	5. morality ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Final Year draws ever closer, there are still matters that Subaru and Seishirou must deal with. Since they are still spectacularly bad at handling confrontation, they deal by not dealing at all. A hedonistic vacation to a rainy beach is had amidst copious imagery of storms, birds, and sin, before Seishirou decides that it's time for an uncharacteristic moment of cowardice. When they next meet at Nakano, Subaru comes to terms with an uncomfortable realisation about himself. (What are you talking about? My summaries are amazing.)
> 
> Please heed the tags: in this chapter, there is implied shower sex, implied asphyxiation, shotgun kisses (whoo!), very consensual sex, biting during sex, descriptions of the earthquake at Nakano, and mentions of imprisonment. With that last warning, I should also warn for Setsuka. Just Setsuka.

Months pass. Soon, it is a year, then two. Seishirou comes to him more and more regularly. There are some times when all they do is talk, and there are also some times when they just sit or walk together in silence. They do not speak again of the Final Day, but still, it looms over them like the shadow of a massive pendulum.

He becomes aware that there are people who’ve been searching for him. He manages to evade them, but there’ve been more close calls than he’s entirely comfortable with. They’ve arrived at crime scenes he’s assisted at moments after he’s left, and occasionally, they pick up traces of his magical signature where he’s had a job.

At first, it’s just a number of men in suits, but as time drags on, a young wind mage joins the search party, closely followed by a middle-aged wind master. Some months later, he finds himself shielding his magic from a Kouya monk, an Ise shrine maiden, and a young girl with an _inugami_ on several separate occasions. They do not seem to know each other, nor do they seem to know that there is more than one person searching for him.

“Do you know who they are?” Seishirou had asked him once.

Subaru had just shrugged. He’d had some ideas about his search party, but didn’t really care enough to confirm them.

“Dragons of Heaven,” Seishirou had said flatly, proving his suspicions correct.

He suspects that Seishirou is experiencing similar problems, even though he does not make mention of it. They continue on without acknowledging the coming of their fate, avoiding their fellows on both sides and acting as if everything is as usual until the year before the Final Year, when it seems they finally reach the tipping point.

It is a very near miss. With her usual cheerful ferocity, the _inugami-_ mistress had chased him for over an hour, hunting his magical signature through every twist and turn he’d taken. She comes so close to catching him that he notices for the first time, that despite her cheerful expression and tone, she has very sad eyes. There is a great deal of loneliness in her magic.

 _And she thinks I can take away that loneliness,_ Subaru realises suddenly.

In a moment of distraction, he turns into a dead-end. He squares his jaw, already bracing himself for impact, when he feels a familiar _maroboshi_ wrapping around him _._

Seishirou slips out of the shadows and emerges suddenly onto the main street, just in time to collide, quite spectacularly, with the Dragon of Heaven charging full-tilt down the pavement. She bounces off of him and all but flies back onto the floor, her _inugami_ jumping around her fallen body in a cacophony of worried barking.

“Oh dear!” Seishirou exclaims in an excellent facsimile of concern, approaching her crumpled form, “Are you alright?”

The girl shakes off the fall and jumps immediately back to her feet.

“I’m so sorry!” she cries, “I wasn’t looking where I was going and…”

Their voices fade to silence as the _maroboshi_ dims around him, as he’s swallowed into a very familiar darkness.

Petals begin to fall like pink snow around him, blown from the boughs of an ancient tree. He remembers this tree far better than he’d like, remembers the air of violence that always seems to surround it, remembers its horrific power.

He can still feel that power in its roots, but it is strangely dormant today. It brushes blindly over him for the briefest of moments when it first detects his presence, but ultimately withdraws without retaliation. It is now quiet where it used to be hostile. The souls within it aren’t screaming. The violence he’d felt before is absent.

The change is so pronounced that he dares even to approach it, to lay a hand against its trunk. There are very many terrible things a thing of such power could do to him, but it allows the touch. In fact, it seems almost to _welcome_ him.

“It recognises you,” Seishirou’s voice comes suddenly from behind him.

He turns in time to see Seishirou emerging seamlessly from the darkness. He does not seem concerned by the strange docility of the entity he’s tasked to serve.

“The Final Day is almost upon us,” he comments instead, pulling the sunglasses from his face.

At that, Subaru can’t help but remember the sad eyes of the _inugami-_ mistress, the loneliness that she’d believed he could take away. He sighs, rubbing tiredly at his face.

Seishirou is quiet.

When he looks up, the man is watching him with an unreadable look on his face.

“You wanted to go to her.”

Subaru shrugs.

“She seemed so alone,” he says, in lieu of an answer to the unspoken question.

“Hmm.”

Seishirou turns away, pulling out a pack of Mild Sevens and lighting one. Subaru wraps his arms around himself as he smokes the cigarette slowly and wordlessly. They stand there in silence for a long time, the distance between them somehow seeming uncrossable, as if they were miles and miles away from each other instead of mere feet apart. The feeling, Subaru realises, is a cold one.

Finally, Seishirou drops the cigarette and grinds it out under his shoe.

“I don’t,” he says, back still turned, “care much about the fate of the world— but I’m curious to know what _you_ will do.”

Subaru can’t help the bitter chuckle that bubbles up within him.

“What I’m supposed to,” he answers emptily, “Protect.”

Seishirou turns his face up toward the sky. The _maroboshi_ fades slowly around them, letting in the distant sounds of traffic and thunder. They are left standing in the alley they had begun in, rain falling over the Shinjuku highrises. The walls are grey and old in the stormy light, asphalt cracked and crumbling. Seishirou closes his eyes against the raindrops on his face.

“Ah,” he murmurs, “What awful weather. Just makes you want to take a vacation to someplace sunny, doesn’t it?”

A rebellious thought occurs suddenly to Subaru.

“Let’s go then,” he suggests impulsively.

Seishirou looks at him, surprised, but he is feeling abruptly daring. He takes a defiant step forward.

“Go wherever you like,” he challenges, “But—“

As he tries to muster up words, the bravado begins to slip away just as suddenly as it came.

“Just don’t go without me,” he finishes in a whisper, feeling unbearably small.

His quiet, vulnerable plea is met only with silence. It does not help the feeling of rawness, the feeling of nakedness. He doesn’t know how Seishirou always makes him feel this way, so stripped bare and exposed. He turns quickly to leave, drawing his coat tight around him.

“Wait,” Seishirou says.

He pauses.

He can hear Seishirou taking a slow step toward him.

“I know a place where we can go.”

 

* * *

 

They take the first train out of Tokyo, Seishirou reading in the seat beside him as he dozes. The rain splatters soothingly against the window as they speed past skyscrapers and high-rises into open fields and smaller cities. At one point, he comes to with his head against Seishirou’s shoulder, absent fingers carding through his hair, and sits up to rub at his eyes. The speakers overhead are halfway through the arrival announcement.

“What _are_ you reading,” he mumbles after a moment.

“A book on astrophysics,” Seishirou answers, flipping the book shut to show him the cover— _A Brief History of Time_ by Stephen Hawking.

“Ah,” Subaru says, “You probably did a science degree before becoming a vet.”

“Well… yes.” Seishirou chuckles. “But not in _astrophysics.”_

They get off the _shinkansen_ and transfer to another line. He resumes dozing, soothed by the persistent rain and the warmth of the man against his side, lulled to sleep by the gentle fingers in his hair. Seishirou shakes him awake after they’ve reached what feels like the end of the line.

“Wake up, Subaru-kun. We’re here.”

 _Here_ is an old train station by the beach. It’s positioned on a grassy hill that drops suddenly into the sea, with only a thin stretch of sand between. The sky is downcast over the rolling teal waves, concealed entirely by moody clouds. The rain comes down in a light drizzle.

“Where are we?” he asks sleepily, rubbing at his hands together to ward off the chilly sea-breeze.

Seishirou reaches out and takes his hand. He is warm.

“We’re about a twenty-minute train ride out from Kanazawa city,” he answers, picking up his duffle bag, “There’s a house down the beach. It’s within walking distance, but it might take awhile.”

Subaru curls his fingers around Seishirou’s as they set off across the grassy hill. It’s quiet save for the rustle of the wind through the long grasses, with not a single other person in sight. Some distance away, Subaru thinks he can see houses with the lights on, so it seems that the residents are all staying indoors. It’s probably because of the weather.

“Have you ever been to Kanazawa?” Seishirou asks out of the blue, “It smells always of rain. People live quiet lives, and the scenery is beautiful. It is a lot like Kyoto actually— old buildings, cobblestone paths, and women in _kimono_. I think you would like it there.”

“We should go one day then,” Subaru says absently.

They eventually reach a house painted entirely in pastel colours and trimmed in pale wood. It’s a little old, but that somehow only adds to its charm. A short way from the house, an old but sturdy looking wooden boardwalk leads through the yellowing grass, down the hill, and onto the beach front. The sand is pale as bone in the darkening day, the sunset hidden under the cover of heavy clouds.

Seishirou goes unhesitantly up to the door and unlocks it. The inside is dim, the downcast light painting everything grey and the rain on the window panes casting speckles of shadow onto the wooden floor.

Seishirou leaves him to pad off into the house. A moment later, the lights in the entranceway flicker on. There’s an empty rack in the _genkan_ that Subaru neatly lines his shoes in, but no house slippers at the door to replace them. The wooden floor is cold under his feet when he goes to locate Seishirou. He’s fiddling with the settings on the heater.

“It’s cold here, isn’t it?” he says absently.

“More so than Tokyo,” Subaru agrees.

“Kanazawa is a lot more humid than Tokyo. Makes it colder in the winter, but hotter in the summer.”

A low humming fills the room as the heater begins running. Seishirou turns around.

“The bedroom is upstairs,” he says, “I’m going to take a shower— and you should too.”

He disappears up the stairs with his bag while Subaru explores the first floor. There is a small laundry room, a storeroom which he does not bother looking into, a reasonably sized kitchen with a small table for two, and a back porch overlooking the sea. There is no bathroom.

He heads up the darkened stairwell. The entire second floor is an open bedroom, with a balcony opening up to a quickly darkening sky. The only source of light in the dark room is the long strip stretching from the bathroom door. Subaru can hear the shower running from inside. He sets his bag down on the bed beside Seishirou’s, mindful of the clothes laid neatly out beside it.

_I’m going to take a shower— and you should too._

Was that an invitation?

He looks back toward the door. It is slightly open.

He shrugs off his damp coat, decision made, and unbuttons his shirt as he goes. The bathroom door creaks quietly when he pushes it open, but it’s enough to catch Seishirou’s attention. The man turns to look at him through the glass door of the shower, as he lets his shirt fall off his shoulders and to the floor, stepping out of the rest on the way. He ducks under the spray, half-blocked by the bulk of Seishirou’s broad back, and closes the shower door behind him. Seishirou places one palm flat on the glass by his head.

“Turn around,” he says quietly, “And put your hands against the glass.”

His breath quickens.

He closes his eyes, and does as he is told.

Gentle fingers touch him low on his back, where he knows there’s a scar from the first time Seishirou took a cigarette to him. A moment later, that hand brushes down over the curve of his ass, briefly touching him at the place where his body opens.

A click of a bottle cap, the sound of slickness— and then Seishirou curls his clean hand around the back of Subaru’s neck, pushing him gently, but firmly down. Subaru obediently puts his cheek against the glass. The hand around his throat shifts to find a better grip. The thumb settles neatly into the hollow of his throat.

He breathes in, quick, before the fingers tighten and Seishirou thrusts in.

“Sei—“

The gasp is choked off into silence.

 

* * *

 

By the time they are done, the stars are out and coldly brilliant against the pitch sky. They sit on the balcony, overlooking the faraway lights of Kanazawa city, shrouded in cigarette smoke with an ash tray between them. Despite its beauty, the lighted skyline is dim enough that it does nothing to take away from the stars, a completely different sort of beauty from Tokyo’s seductive, parasitic glamor.

Subaru tilts his head back against the balcony doors, closing his eyes as he breathes the smoke deep into his lungs. It’s a heady feeling— sex, nicotine, and the liberation of the moment blending together into a wicked ecstasy. Fingers in his hair. He turns his head obligingly to meet Seishirou’s kiss. His hands curl helplessly into Seishirou’s shirt as the man leans in and _takes._

It’s like being devoured, like his breath is being sucked from him along with any remaining semblance of sanity. He’s left trembling and raw when Seishirou pulls back, smoke trailing slowly from parted lips. Seishirou just looks at him, tawny eyes dark and hooded, before he takes a deep draw from his own cigarette. This time, it is Subaru who leans in. He tilts his chin up, gasping and clutching desperately at the man’s arms, as Seishirou _breathes_ into him.

Their kisses always taste like ash in his mouth.

They spend the next day on the porch, trading kisses between cigarettes and the crash of waves against the shore. They walk down the beach, barefoot with the sea washing up against their ankles, and run through the sudden downpour to the house amidst the first rumbles of thunder. The afternoon is wiled away in the tangle of joint bodies into the sheets, sweat-slick skin gleaming in the sporadic flashes of lightning, and gasps muffled under the thunder that follows. Sea-birds circle overhead, storm clouds gathering on the horizon above the white caps of violent tides. It’s like some kind of sick, hedonistic dream.

He must have slept somewhere along the way, even though he does not remember falling asleep. He only remembers waking, quiet in the early morning light, with sweat cooling on his naked back. Seishirou is pressed up against his side with one hand folded behind his head, the other resting low and possessive on Subaru’s bare hip.

“My mother used to say,” he begins quietly, staring right up at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes, “That the canvas changes the artist, as much as the artist changes the canvas.”

Subaru turns his face out of the pillows toward him. The firm touch on his hip turns to an absent caress.

“She said that every glass cup she broke cracked something inside her,” the man continues, “and putting the shards back together was like piecing the cracked pieces of herself into something new. She said that every mosaic piece she created changed her— _remade_ her.” He laughs. "I thought it was a whole lot of nonsense."

Rain patters against the glass doors of the balcony in the silence that follows.

Subaru shifts a little to look up at the tense line of Seishirou’s jaw. Although it doesn’t show in his expression or body, Subaru gets the impossible impression that something has unsettled the man.

“I remember that wire stag you made,” he says, voice hoarse, “A long time ago. Did you do art? Do you still do art?”

Seishirou just chuckles.

“That isn’t art,” he dismisses easily.

“Then what is?”

Seishirou doesn’t answer.

On his stomach, cheek pressed into the pillow, Subaru watches Seishirou through dark lashes as he reaches out slowly, cups a hand over the back of Subaru’s bare neck. It’s a gentle touch— but his fingers fit perfectly into the collar of violent bruises just beginning to bloom, livid and burgundy, over pale skin. Subaru cannot help but shudder, his eyes fluttering closed.

The rustle of sheets is all the more sensual without sight. The press of sweat-damp skin to his naked back has him drawing a sharp breath as Seishirou shifts up to kneel over him, pressing him gently but firmly down into the bed by the neck. The bed creaks as Seishirou leans down. The hand on his neck curls around the front of his throat, thumb pressed delicately into the hollow.

Chapped lips against his nape, then the sharp, sudden pain of teeth.

“Seishirou-san,” he gasps.

But those lips are unsmiling against his skin.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Seishirou is gone.

Sea-birds circle, crying, above the crashing waves. He curls into the cold sheets, naked and utterly alone.

 

* * *

 

It takes two weeks after he returns to Tokyo, two weeks of silence, before he realises that Seishirou is not coming back. He turns every rock and peers into every cranny, follows every trace of Seishirou’s magic in search of the man— but he finds only dead-ends. Seishirou is very good at hiding, and he has forgotten that.

The two weeks stretches out to months, then to a year— a whole year of silence, and the aching absence where Seishirou used to be. During that time, he alternates between anger and desolate confusion. He does not know what to do with himself.

The first call comes to him while he’s smoking on the balcony of his Shinjuku apartment, like a single drop falling and rippling across Tokyo. The birth of the _shinken,_ and the first stirrings of the awakening _kamui._

He has felt the beginnings of a unfamiliar magic nursing in the hollows of his too-prominent ribs, in the empty crevices of his heart. He’s been trained in its use all his life, in preparation for this day, but the rare strain of magic needed to release the spell had always been just out of his reach. His grandmother had told him that it would awaken when it was time, and it _is_ time.

He lights another cigarette, breathes the smoke from his broken lungs, and ignores the calling of his fate.

The second call comes to him while he is traveling back to his apartment from a job. This time it is not a ripple, but a deep, violent shudder, the death throes of one of the world’s cornerstones. He recognises the magic slithering through the cracks, the spell that is tearing the world apart. He drops his cigarette, and he _flies._

He vaguely registers passing the Ise maiden and the Kouya monk, but he cannot bring himself to care about them. His fate is calling, and this time it will not be ignored. He launches himself off the roof, leaving them behind without a second glance to dive into the eye of the storm. Asphalt is cracking, swallowing up men and women alike. Concrete is falling from the sky, and children are crying on the streets amidst the distant scream of sirens. Down below, he can see blood pooling on the sidewalk, hear the screams, the groans of agony. It’s chaos, death, and pain.

 _But that isn’t why I’m here,_ Subaru realises suddenly, the epiphany of that cracking something inside of him. _I do not care about them at all._

The smoke clears around the ruins of Nakano Sun Plaza, where he can faintly see the outline of broad shoulders and a long, black coat. He leaps down, landing as that silhouetted figure turns, and straightens as a deeply familiar face comes into view. For a moment, it’s like the world stops around them, taking his heart along with it. Then, the man reaches up to pull his sunglasses off, surprise and something like gratification on his face.

“Subaru-kun,” he murmurs.

Something is breaking inside of him, cracking open and warm at the sound of that voice. It is as rich and deep in timber as he remembers.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he says hoarsely.

“Why?”

He closes his eyes.

 _I would let them all die,_ his heart is crying, _I would let the world burn just so that I could protect you._

The realisation of that shatters something deep and fundamental inside of him.

“To make my wish a reality.”

The liquid feeling in his chest swells beyond containment. A dormant power is awakening within him, moving through his body in a pattern that he immediately recognises. He instinctively brings his palms up as the _kekkai_ tears painfully from his bones, roaring up and into the sky as it is realised for the first time.

The silence that comes after is deafening.

“A _kekkai,”_ Seishirou observes dryly, “Borne by one who is meant to protect the world from destruction.”

The abandonment in him breaks suddenly to anger. His magic swells as he draws his _ofuda._

“I don’t _care_ about the fate of the world,” he snarls, flinging his arm out.

Seishirou breaks the vicious line of screaming _shiki_ with a downward cut of his hand. He looks up, eyes wide. There’s a moment when their gaze meets, surprised gold to furious green, before the battle begins for real. Subaru fights like he’s never fought before, betrayal and hurt in every blow, rage magnifying every spell. He fights viciously, and he fights _dirty._ He weaves a web, he casts a trap, and when he finally has Seishirou caged, he glares back as the man looks up at him through his spell.

“Your wish,” Seishirou asks, “Is it to kill me?”

He says nothing. It is the _furthest_ thing from what he wants.

Seishirou laughs.

“Oh, Subaru-kun,” he chuckles, “How _cute._ ”

He bristles as Seishirou reaches up to wipe the trickle of blood from his cheek.

“Well,” he says, raising his hand absently to inspect it, “I would love to play a little longer, but I have somewhere to be.”

He feels the stirring of blood magic before it activates, and curses himself for his carelessness. He braces himself, pushing back against Seishirou and pouring more power into the containment spell— but it is no use. Seishirou tears through his spell as easily as the paper it was cast from, the blood fuelling his spell infinitely more potent then mere paper charms.

He’s on his knees before he can register the pain, blood leaking through his fingers and dripping onto the floor. He looks at his hands, before glaring up at Seishirou. The injury could have been a lot worse. Seishirou is _playing._

He lashes out with a final spell— but Seishirou catches his wrist before he can cast it. There’s a strange look on the man’s face as he leans in, drawing his thumb gently over Subaru’s cheek.

“Then,” he whispers, “I’ll see you again.”

He disintegrates into petals before Subaru can stop him, leaving him kneeling alone on the cold, hard floor. There’s no way, he knows, that Seishirou can escape from his _kekkai,_ not unless he kills Subaru first. He stands. He knows that he won’t find Seishirou unless he wants to be found, but he can still feel the tingle of a familiar _maroboshi,_ still feel the man still lurking within the boundaries of the _kekkai_.

 _I’ve got you now,_ he thinks viciously, as that strange and new-awakened magic within him closes in like a net— latches on. The tracing spell connects perfectly, undetected.

Two light thumps come from behind him, one after the other. He looks up.The Ise priestess and the Kouya monk have finally caught up to him, but he does not have time for that.

He strides right past them, ignoring the spluttering of the monk.

“H—Hey!” and then, “This guy has a pretty face, but he isn’t very friendly!”

“You created a _kekkai,_ ” the Ise maiden calls from behind him.

Something about the quiet, stoic tone of her voice makes him stop.

“My name is Kishuu Arashi,” she says—

“And I’m her future _sweetheart~_ Arisugawa Sorata!” the monk pipes up.

“Please,” the girl continues, as if her companion hadn’t spoken at all, “Will you at least tell us your name? I think— that we’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

 _I’ve been running from you for a long time,_ he does not say.

Instead, he turns back to look her in the eye.

“Sumeragi Subaru.”

He can hear the sharp intake of breath from behind him, but that is of no concern to him. He looks up at the shimmering walls of the _kekkai._ There is no more use for it _._

He won’t find Seishirou unless the man decides to appear again, but he also knows that if he takes down the barrier, all of the damage they’ve wrought in their fight will become reality. Yet, there is not much else he can do to prevent the damage from happening, aside from killing its caster— and he knows that that isn’t happening.

 _Is this what you meant,_ he wonders silently. _Is this what you meant that time we argued, in that alley by the construction site?_

There is no response.

 _It doesn’t matter anymore,_ he thinks, before the magic in him begins shifting, unraveling. The _kekkai_ shrinks around them, settling down to rest dormant in his body, as sound begins to filter back around them. Screams, anguished groans, and desolate crying ring out amidst distant sirens.

He turns to go as, behind him, Nakano begins to crumble.

 

* * *

 

He activates the tracking spell later that night, following it as it darts from roof to roof, post to post, before finally settling on the roof of a particularly upscale apartment building. It’s one of the taller apartment blocks in Tokyo, centrally located and overlooking the glimmering skyscrapers of Tokyo’s city center.

Seishirou turns to look at him as he lands lightly behind him.

“You,” he says, surprise widening his eyes— before he laughs, mirthlessly, “I can’t run from you, can I?”

Seishirou reaches out to open the emergency exit of the roof. Subaru can feel wards unlocking, slotting apart like puzzle pieces as he pushes the door open, as he descends down into the darkness of the stairwell.

“Well?” he calls back over his shoulder, “Are you coming?”

Tucking his hands into the pockets of his coat, Subaru follows him down into darkness. There is no light inside the stairwell, save for the green glow of the exit signs above each door, lighting the sharp edges of Seishirou’s face as they head down the stairs together. Seishirou does not turn to look at him.

“You know what you did, don’t you?” he asks jovially, “When you took down that _kekkai_ without finishing our fight for good.”

Subaru says nothing. There is nothing he can say.

After a moment, Seishirou stops, and turns back to look at him over his shoulder.

“You killed them all,” he says flatly.

He turns away, and continues down the emergency exit.

After a moment, Subaru follows.

Their footsteps echo around the empty stairwell, bouncing off the concrete walls and spiralling down the building in an eerie murmur. The sounds of the other residents do not penetrate the walls, shrouding them in silence.

“I was ten when I first realised what was in store for me,” Seishirou shares suddenly, “They wanted to keep me there too. In that small, dark room where they kept my mother behind bars, like a mad dog they could release as they pleased to wreck havoc upon their enemies.”

He chuckles humorlessly. The sound echoes ominously around them, growing softer and softer as it spirals slowly down the stairwell. The laughter stops as suddenly as it started.

“I refused,” Seishirou says flatly.

Subaru follows him in silence, round and round, down and down, waiting to hear the rest of the story. It is almost a minute before Seishirou speaks again into the darkness.

“I knew what I had to do,” he resumes casually, like he had never stopped, “I knew what I had to do so that they could never do to me what they had done to her. And so— that day— I left the bars to her room open, _unlocked_.” He laughs again. “I’m sure you know what happens when you free a mad dog that has been imprisoned, tortured, and _used_ for all its life.”

Subaru says nothing as Seishirou shakes his head, still chuckling.

“The next time I went to see her,” he continues, “There was blood in every room of the mansion. On the walls, on the floor, even splattered on the ceiling! _How did she even do that?_ I wondered then. Well, I still haven’t the faintest clue. She was vicious, mad the way I never was. She was frightening, a force of nature. She was wild— she was _dangerous._ They made her that way with what they did to her, and because of what she had become, they could never again let her free.” He shrugs easily. “ I found my mother sitting under the camellias in the backyard, her white kimono dripping red. She had killed them all. Every last one of them.”

He stops suddenly on one of the landings, one hand resting on the handle of the exit door. He turns to look Subaru dead in the eye.

“That’s what you did today, isn’t it?” he asks, with a cheerful tilt of his head, “You let the killer out, and everyone died. I may have been the one to strike the killing blow, yes, but you _knew_ what would happen when you did what you did.” He laughs. “Oh Subaru-kun,” he says, shaking his head, “You killed them as much as I did.”

Subaru draws a deep breath, closing his eyes as he lets that sink in. He does not reject it. He does not deny it. It is his cross to bear. There are important things in this world that he would compromise, he knows, just so that he could protect this man. He does not know how, and he does not know why. Heaven knows that this person has never given him cause to need him the way that he does.

Seishirou turns the handle of the door, and Subaru immediately senses the slide of heavy wards unlocking, unravelling, sliding apart like puzzle pieces. When Seishirou pushes the door open, it leads right into a spacious apartment.

The man tilts his head, holding the door open behind him.

“Well?” he asks, “Are you coming?”

Something shifts inside him then, slotting into place somewhere else. There’s an empty space in him where something important used to be, something that he doesn’t think he can ever recover now. He’s done something that he can never take back, and there’s no where else he can go from here.

“Yes,” he says, “I’m coming.”

The single step that he takes across the threshold feels oddly significant.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I am now in the midst of my semester, I am not entirely sure when the next update will be. It's been planned, and there are major portions of it written out, but I'm not entirely sure when it will be done. That said, I've really appreciated the great comments that people have been leaving on this story! Thank you so much for the support, and I just want to tell you all that I come back to read your comments every time I feel stuck on this story.


	6. pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Subaru tries to fuck away his feelings because he is dumb and fails— miserably. Seishirou is bewildered at his attempts. Seishirou is also dumb. The only person who isn't dumb in this chapter is Karen. The only smart characters in my stories are women. That's a thing you have to know when you read my writing.
> 
> Oh yes. Warnings: To be honest, the sex in this chapter is very consensual and not very violent at all. You could possibly interpret it being dub-con on Seishirou's end (wow, for once). There's some unnegotiated dom/sub near the end. Very bad BDSM etiquette. Mostly though, Subaru is in a very bad mental state. He's disassociating and being self-destructive. Please be careful if that bothers you.

Seishirou usually cooks when he’s over at the man’s apartment. The taste of his cooking is familiar in a strangely comforting way. It calls to memories that are almost a decade old— simple, but impeccably flavoured, and always with a slightly traditional twist. Seishirou usually cooks when he’s over at the man’s apartment, and he’s just beginning to realise how strange that is.

“Let’s eat out,” Seishirou will say on particular days. Today, there’s a slackness to his expression that hints at tiredness, and so Subaru pulls his coat on wordlessly, pretending not to see Seishirou rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

Seishirou, he knows, often suffers from tension headaches after jobs. He hates that he knows this about Seishirou, hates that somewhere along the way, he has neatly bent to accommodate it. He tries not to remind himself of the nature of Seishirou’s work, of just what he is accommodating.

They spill into the train, herded by the crowd of dinner-time commuters. He vaguely wonders what they look like to others, him with one hand wrapped around the pole, and Seishirou reaching around him to hold it too, so that he’s standing in the circle of the man’s arm. In the reflection of the dark window, he can see them— two willowy figures, one black and one white, swaying against each other with the movements of the train. Seishirou reaches out to steady him by the elbow when he steps forward into his chest at a particularly jerky turn.

“Careful,” he murmurs absently, and Subaru is not sure what to do with that.

They alight at Seishirou’s instruction. He is guided through the crowd by the hand at his back, Seishirou absently holding the heavy door open for him, and then for the tired schoolgirl behind them as they leave the station.

The crisp January air hits them as they emerge onto the streets, the chill prickling immediately at his nose, lips, and fingers. He shoves his hands into his coat and tilts his face down into his scarf. The hand at his back moves to rub at his arm as Seishirou steers him down a nearby laneway. There are restaurants lining the alley, bustling with life and variety. There are cuisines of almost every kind here.

“Italian?” Seishirou asks, the word coming from his pale lips with a burst of condensation, “Or maybe traditional hotpot? Your choice.”

“We had hotpot last week,” Subaru complains, and Seishirou laughs.

“Italian it is,” he concedes cheerfully.

They turn into a rather quaint looking restaurant. Subaru had always thought that Seishirou would be one for expensive restaurants, but that isn’t always the case. This one is small, but lively, and looks family-owned.

“Table for two?”

“Yes, please. Thank you.”

The waitress shows them to a table near the entrance. The window overlooks the quaint street and its dimly glowing lights. Subaru flips through the menu, but has no real opinion on what to have. He’s never had proper Italian. He tells Seishirou so.

“Try the truffle linguine with the white cream,” the man suggests absently. He’s perusing the wine list with hawkish eyes, “You can have some of mine, if you’d like, but the dessert here is good so you should save some space for that.” He looks up, waves a waiter over. “The merlot please, and venison for me.”

He looks over at Subaru expectantly.

“Whatever you just recommended,” Subaru decides.

“The truffle linguine for him,” Seishirou says, turning back to the waiter, “Oh, and we’d like to keep the dessert menu. Thanks.”

Subaru carefully unfolds his napkin over his lap as the waiter confirms their order and leaves. He comes back with a bottle of wine, which Seishirou tastes before allowing him to fill both of their glasses. Their meal comes shortly after that.

He enjoys the linguine more than he’d thought he would, the sauce rich on his tongue and blending perfectly with the flavour of the light wine. Seishirou cuts him a few pieces of his venison to try, which he enjoys as well, before they order dessert. He eats almost half of Seishirou’s dessert off his plate, to which the man only laughs indulgently. Throughout it all, they share idle conversation about the weather, about the traffic in Tokyo, about nothing particularly important.

The easy conversation continues after they call for the bill, after they exit the restaurant to take a meandering walk down the quaint laneway. The wine they’d had warms him from inside out, suffusing him with a pleasant heat— but strangely, he is trembling like a leaf from the cold. Seishirou hands him the bag with the leftover wine, then shucks his coat off and drapes it over Subaru’s shaking shoulders.

“The thing about alcohol,” he laughs, “Is that it dilates the blood vessels, bringing the blood closer to the skin. That’s what makes you feel warm—the blood, heated by your body’s core temperature, feels warm where your skin is cooled by the cold weather—but that’s also what allows the cold to drain the heat from your body. If exposed to extremely cold weather, alcohol increases the risk of hypothermia.”

The fairy lights glow against the contours of Seishirou’s face, the curves of his apples when he smiles at Subaru.

Up ahead, there is a stand selling crepes. Seishirou insists on crepes despite having already had dessert, and so they join the short queue. When a large labrador noses up curiously behind his knee in the queue, unnoticed by the child holding its leash, he bends to scratch it behind the ear. It’s tail begins to thump happily against the ground.

“You used to love animals as a boy— do you remember that?” Seishirou notes later, as he pays the vendor and collects his crepe, “But you didn’t even try to pet the dog.”

Subaru shrugs.

“People change,” he says.

The corners of Seishirou’s eyes crinkle when he smiles.

“Yes,” he says, with a small laugh, “They do, don’t they?”

They return to Seishirou’s apartment after that, and the man digs around in the kitchen for awhile before he emerges with a packet of spices and a saucepan that he sets on the stove. Subaru sits perched on the kitchen island with one of Seishirou’s sweaters pulled around his shoulders.

“Mulling spices,” Seishirou explains as he pours the wine into the saucepan and empties the packet into it, “I was in England for a bit during my college days, and they used to have this thing during Christmas you could buy in the markets— hot wine and spices. It’s not so common here.”

Once it begins to simmer, he goes to retrieve two mugs from the drying rack. He pauses on the way back, drawing his eyes slowly and appraisingly over Subaru, before he goes to tip the wine into the mugs.

“Here,” he says, pressing one into Subaru’s hands, “Try it.”

Subaru does so. The wine is sweet.

Seishirou’s kiss, when he slips between Subaru’s thighs, is just as sweet— and so very, wonderfully, warm.

 

* * *

 

The thing is— the thing _is—_ he _knows_ he’s in trouble now, huge trouble, and he’s not sure what to do. He’s not sure what to do about the fact that, since Nakano, their encounters no longer end in violence. He’s not sure what to do with the smiles that sometimes come during their conversations,thoughtless and artless and candid. He’s not sure what to do when Seishirou touches him, so carefully and so gently— like he’s something inconceivably and inexplicably precious.

 _Why are you being so gentle,_ he wants to demand when Seishirou brushes his hair back from his face that night, when Seishirou cups the side of his neck and leans down to mouth along his throat, pushing him down onto his back. _Why are you acting like you care,_ he wants to scream— but the sound catches in his chest, strangled by some unnamed emotion, and comes out instead as little helpless half-breaths.

_This would be easier if you’d just be cruel._

“Seishirou—” he finally manages to choke out, “Seishirou, _stop._ I can’t—“

The angle changes ever so slightly, and suddenly he’s _right there._

“I can’t—“ he gasps.

Seishirou just holds him through it all, just holds him together as he breaks _apart._ He’s losing a little more of himself every time and he’s not sure what to do about that, not sure what to do when Seishirou continues to grind deep and steady into him—no blood, no tears, no burns. The man tilts his jaw up and kisses him firmly.

“Are you alright?” he murmurs against Subaru’s lips.

“Oh god,” Subaru just whispers, “Oh god.”

When he wakes in the morning, he’s pressed up against Seishirou’s side.

The man has his pager in one hand, cigarette balanced between his lips, and his free hand resting lightly on Subaru’s nape. He appears to be reading his emails, but he turns from his screen when Subaru shifts to offer a quiet greeting— _ohayo gozaimasu—_ before turning back to his inbox. The thumb on Subaru's neck catches against the jut of where his spine begins, and starts to draw down slowly, rising and falling against each vertebra.

It’s raining again outside, the sea-smell of it twining itself through the curling odor of cigarette smoke. In that drowsy moment between sleep and waking, Subaru allows himself to lean into Seishirou’s warmth, Seishirou’s touch, Seishirou’s _heart_ ,  beating as inexorable as distant thunder beneath his ribs, as he counts the vertebrae of Subaru’s spine. Surrounded by the patter of rain and the body-warmed duvet pulled right up to his cheek, the smell of it— sea-salt mixed with bitter cigarettes—

He pulls suddenly away from Seishirou’s touch and sits up.

“What are you _doing?”_ he demands, bewildered and suddenly angry.

The worst part is that Seishirou looks just as bewildered as Subaru feels. They stare at each other in silence from across the sea of rumpled, tousled sheets, Subaru naked and indignant, breath coming fast and shallow, and Seishirou looking just faintly surprised. _God,_ Subaru thinks, _what am_ I _doing?_

“I have to go,” he says, getting up, collecting his scattered clothing quickly from the bedroom floor, and retreating into the bathroom.

He catches a passing glimpse of himself in the mirror, a pale spectre with pinking bruises lining his jaw. _Love bites_ _,_ he realises. Seishirou had never left any on him before— or if he had, they’d always been swallowed up by collars of violent bruises in the shape of violent hands.

Seishirou comes to stand in the doorway as he dresses, as he makes himself look as presentable as he can with the top few buttons of his shirt missing and his pants rumpled beyond salvation. The man angles himself to let Subaru out when he’s done, wordlessly watching him head into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water, which he downs in one go.

Subaru puts his hands on the kitchen counter, head lowered as he closes his eyes. He hears Seishirou come up from behind him.

Hesitant fingers brush gently over his hip.

“Are you,” the man begins slowly, “alright?”

His breath puffs out of him in something like laughter.

“Am I alright?” he repeats.

Seishirou steps back when he turns around, but he does not even look at the man, snatching the key off the dining table.

When he leaves the house, a little old lady that he vaguely remembers meeting in the lift the night before is standing outside in her pyjamas, watering her plants. She double-takes, clearly recognising him, before her eyes catch on the bruises along his jawline. She looks back at Seishirou’s door, eyes widening. The spray bottle falls from her loosened fingers. With a final scandalised glance at him, she turns and scurries back into her apartment.

 _Let her judge_ , Subaru thinks to himself, _she doesn’t know that she’s living next to a murderer._

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t go back to see Seishirou for three days. On the third day, Seishirou shows up at his apartment. They go out for lunch, hotpot again _,_ and Seishirou doesn’t talk about the last time. They talk about _everything_ except for the last time. He feels something wrench inside of him when Seishirou laughs at something he’d said, halfway through a conversation about the Dragons of Earth.

He gets up right then, and leaves without a word.

Seishirou doesn’t come looking for him after that.

Alone in his apartment, he can feel the ants beginning to crawl under his skin. He wants to scream, wants to tear at himself until the crawling stops, until his mind stops running and leaves him in peace. He wants to hurt someone. He wants to hurt himself. He wants to see Seishirou again. He wants to _never_ see Seishirou again.

By the middle of the second week, he capitulates and digs up the spare key to Seishirou’s apartment. He’d thrown across the room when he’d first come back _that_ morning. He finds it under the dishwasher that he doesn’t even use.

Seishirou doesn’t say anything when he shows up at his front door, just lets him in, and gets dinner going. They have something traditional, as they are wont to do whenever Seishirou cooks.When they are done eating, he straddles Seishirou’s lap right then and there, and does it hard and fast— forceful enough to hurt, forceful enough to ache deep inside him when it’s over. Seishirou carries him into bed, naked and still trembling, and just— just slips into bed beside him.

They argue.

To be more precise, Subaru argues _at_ Seishirou, while Seishirou just looks confused. He almost slaps the man for it, but manages to reign himself in at the last possible second. He will not resort to violence. In the end, he just ends up storming out again after half an hour of one-sided shouting.

Seishirou does not come looking for him. He does not go looking for Seishirou.

 

 

  

“You have a very frightening look on your face today, Subaru-san,” Kasumi-san says at the end of the second week.

Subaru starts.

They are sitting in a small cafe in Shibuya, known for its coffee and latte art, that Kasumi-san had suggested when he’d agreed to get a coffee with her. The woman in question smiles at him patiently over their coffee, her chin resting delicately in one palm. He immediately allows his expression to smoothen out into something a little more polite for company.

“I apologise,” he says quickly, “I was thinking about something else, Kasumi-san.”

“Please call me Karen,” she takes a sip of her coffee, smiling, “Do those errant thoughts have anything to do with _those?_ ”

It takes Subaru a few moments to process the subtle drop of her eyes from his face, but when he does, he immediately tugs his collar up over the marks on his throat, mortified. _Unprofessional,_ he chides himself angrily, but his fellow Seal only laughs.

“No judgment,” she assures him, “I’m sure you remember what I do for a living.”

She takes another slow sip of her coffee, pretending not to notice his uncomfortable silence. He appreciates more than he can say. He doesn’t judge her for what she does. Far from it— a job is a job, and every person deserves respect regardless of theircircumstances or profession. That doesn’t mean that he knows how to respond.

Kasumi-san sets down her cup and smiles kindly.

“Girlfriend troubles?” her eyes open to meet his, hawk-like and frighteningly intelligent, “Or perhaps— boyfriend troubles?”

“I—“ Subaru splutters, taken aback at the personal question, “We’re not…”

He trails off.

When it becomes clear that he will not complete the sentence, Kasumi-san hazards a guess.

“So not a relationship.”

“No,” Subaru agrees.

She hums thoughtfully.

“Then maybe,” her eyes flick up, “Someone Subaru-san is in love with?”

He flinches back.

“Absolutely _not!”_ he snaps immediately.

There’s a moment of silence, in which he abruptly realises the tone he’d responded with.

“I’m so sorry, Kasumi-san,” he apologises again, “That wasn’t directed at you. I was just—“

“It’s quite alright,” she says sincerely.

They fall again into silence, Kasumi-san respecting his need for a bout of quiet to collect himself, to prepare his response. Subaru turns his eyes down into his mug. The latte art is slightly warped now, but the coffee is still excellent, bitter and creamy on his tongue, rich in a way that makes him crave a cigarette to go with it.

“What,” he asks carefully, almost fearful of the answer, “Do you call the feeling when— when—“

The words fail him. He rubs vigorously at his face, and reaches for his cigarettes. Kasumi-san just waits silently as he fumbles one to his lips and lights it, as respectful and patient as always, while he angrily sucks away the first three-quarters of his cigarette. He lowers it once the mind-numbing sensation of the nicotine hits.

“Do you think,” he begins again, clumsily, “That there can exist a person who never changes, who never— no— wait—“ he fervently brushes the hair out of his face. “People change,” he revises, “But how much— how much _can_ a person change? Is it _possible_ for a human being to change so completely that— that—”

Kasumi-san says nothing, but maybe he never really needed an answer to that question, because now the words are spilling from him like blood from a punctured heart.

“Sometimes, what comes after all of the quiet wonderment of being _in love_ has been shattered,” he can hear himself saying, “Is the barest bones of something _like_ love _,_ twisted and ugly and— and something that _isn’t_ love at all, I guess. A curiosity, maybe— a need— an _obsession_. An obsession that drags on for so long that it becomes a habit, a caricature of love. I suppose it comes with time. You can’t share _so many years_ with someone and _not_ love them in some way or another— in whatever way you’re still capable of.”

“Yes,” Kasumi-san agrees.

Subaru just stares blankly at her for a moment.

“How much _can_ a human being change?” he blurts out again, “Is it possible to experience that aching, breathless wonderment again, after all the blood and tears and the ways you’ve been hurt and _humiliated_ — mired in the hate and shame— is it possible for a human being to change so much that—“

The door swings open with a tinkle as a patron leaves the shop, letting in the shrill sound of schoolgirls’ laughter from outside.

Subaru startles, as if coming awake from a fever dream, and reaches shakily for his coffee. Kasumi-san lays her hand gently over his just as it closes on the handle of the mug. Her eyes are unbearably kind, unbearably sad.

“Subaru-san, have you ever heard of— well, it’s a little like mosaic, or _kintsugi_ ,” she smiles, “When I was a little girl, my mother used to throw these screaming fits. She would throw things, _break_ things, and then storm out with the shards still on the ground. Later, though— later she would come back and put them together again, with glue and grout and a little metal file. It wasn’t perfect— I mean, most of the time the shards came from different vases and the edges didn’t match but—“

“—but you have something infinitely more interesting, infinitely more beautiful, than what you once had,” Subaru finishes, a long-ago memory coming to him.

Karen laughs.

“Well, I don’t know that I would call it beautiful, or even interesting,” she admits, “You can see the cracks, the scars, and remember the way in which it was broken once, and that’s excruciatingly painful sometimes. I would, however, call it _functional._ It’s essentially the same, but also essentially not— it’s function and form stays, but the feelings, the soul of it is forever changed.”

She taps the table, eyes lowered to her coffee as if mulling carefully over her next words, before she speaks again.

“I guess what I’m trying to say, Subaru-san,” she concludes, “Is that sometimes, after falling out of love with someone, after the pure innocent wonderment of being in love has been shattered into hate and obsession— it’s still possible, after some time, to begin putting pieces back together into something different, not as pure, and not necessarily as beautiful as what once was, but something that retains its function and form. Time has a way of healing you, you know, even when you don’t want to be healed. What you need to know is that your feelings are real and you don’t have to feel shame about them because— because it happens, Subaru-san. _It happens._ ”

She laughs again, a little sadly.

“Subaru-san,” she says gently, “Sometimes after you’ve fallen out of love with someone, after years of pain and misery and the many ways this person has hurt and degraded you— you _can_ fall back in love with someone you’ve fallen out of love with.”

This time, he flinches so violently that he knocks his entire mug over. The coffee goes all over the table, the intricate patterns in the foam atop it destroyed instantly. Faster than he can process his own blunder, Kasumi-san stands in a fluid motion to avoid getting coffee over her clothes. A waiter begins pulling a handful of napkins from the napkin dispenser.

“I’m sorry,” Subaru apologises numbly, “I just— I am _so_ sorry.”

“It is perfectly fine, Subaru-san,” Kasumi-san assures him, slightly bewildered, “Just— are you— are you alright?”

The waiter begins to mop up the mess with his handful of napkins. Subaru stares numbly down at the man for a short moment, something like shock deadening his tongue, his limbs, his mind, something like _horror_ shutting him down.

“No,” he says, quite honestly, “No, I’m not.”

Kasumi-san reaches for him, concerned and shocked, but he takes a step back out of her reach.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, “Please excuse me for a second.”

There’s no other word for what he does next.

He _flees._

 

 

 

It’s like a fog descends upon him. He flees the cafe as if in a trance. He feels strangely like a spectator to his movements, like he’s sitting in the machine of his body and controlling it detachedly from behind a windscreen.

“Subaru-san,” a woman’s voice is saying, and then, “Subaru-san, _wait.”_

Someone tries to catch him by the elbow, but he is walking too fast. The bell tinkles overhead as he pushes the door open and emerges onto the street.

“Subaru-san!” the woman is shouting now, _“The cars—!“_

He vaguely registers someone catching him by the wrist before he can walk into traffic, yanking him roughly around and into a hard chest.

 _“You—“_ the woman splutters.

He vaguely registers being thrown into a cab by someone large and strong. He watches through the window as the woman runs after them, her face panicked, shouting and looking around frantically as if for help.

 _Why does she look so concerned?_ he wonders absently.

The cab draws away from the curb before he can find out.

He’s leaning against someone’s broad, warm body, but he feels cold still. He only registers who that someone is as they tumble into his apartment. It’s Seishirou.

“What is wrong with you?” Seishirou is shouting, “What is _wrong_ with you?”

He doesn’t answer, just turns them around, shoves Seishirou against the wall, and kisses him.

Seishirou immediately kisses back. He begins to tear at the man’s clothing, and can vaguely feel himself being roughly undressed as well. There’s a mouth, hot and wet along the side of his throat, the curve of his ear, the hollows of his collarbones. When he’s down to his underwear and his unbuttoned shirt, and is undoing the fly of Seishirou’s pants, Seishirou jerks as if coming awake from a dream. He turns his face abruptly to the side, Subaru’s lips sliding against his cheek, before pushing Subaru away.

“No,” he snarls.

Subaru doesn’t remember much of what happens next, just remembers shouting, just remembers the sounds of breaking glass and shattering ceramic. He’d told Seishirou that he wished him dead. He’d been standing amidst all the broken glass, screaming through his tears at Seishirou— the man standing across the shards and clutching at his forearm with his pants undone and his eyes hard— and Subaru had screamed it. There had been blood trickling down Seishirou’s arm, pooling in the curl of his fingers.

He knew then that he had done that, had hurt someone like he’d never hurt anyone before— and had turned to leave.

Seishirou tilts his head back as he reaches the door, laughing up at the ceiling and sinking against the dining table, fumbling to light himself a cigarette.

“Well,” Seishirou says, through the rain and the blood and the smoke trailing from his lips like a prayer, _“Well.”_

Subaru closes the door and shoves their bodies together against the table. Seishirou lifts him by the thighs and sits him on top of it, forcing him to lie back with his entire body. Split-slick fingers, then a split-slick cock. It hurts a little, but not as much as it could.

“Seishirou-san,” he gasps, digging his fingers into the broad shoulders above him, clawing them down that broad back. The metallic tang of blood colors the air, but the cigarette burns untouched on the ashtray. Seishirou kisses him.

Subaru opens his mouth, welcoming tongue or teeth, but Seishirou just cups his face gently. In response, Subaru bites down on his bottom lip, hard.

Seishirou jerks back. He slowly sits up, wiping the blood from his mouth.

“What are you _doing?”_ Subaru asks hoarsely, raw and furious.

Seishirou looks down at him, then backhands him. It’s almost _gentle_ compared to what’s been done to him before, and Subaru shoots him a defiant look as if to say, _is that all you’ve got?_ A moment later, a hand presses him down into the table by the throat. The thrusting resumes, harder, rougher. Still not enough.

“Sei—“ he starts.

Seishirou hits him again, and reaches for the lit cigarette.

Subaru closes his eyes as Seishirou pins his wrists above his head with his free hand, as he feels the tell-tale heat of the cigarette just above his clavicle. It remains there, hovering just above his skin for a long while, before Seishirou pulls out— pulls away. He opens his eyes to see Seishirou walking around the table.

Subaru closes his legs and reaches out for the man’s arm. Seishirou turns away, pulling out of reach.

“What are you doing?” he whispers through his ruined throat, but receives only silence.

Presented with the gentle slope of Seishirou's back, he gets the feeling that he should press up against it, that he should hide his face in the nape of Seishirou’s neck. The action seems too much like an apology, and he has nothing to apologise for. _Nothing._ Not to this man.

The moment passes.

Seishirou finishes smoking his cigarette. He stubs it out in the ashtray, collects his clothes off the floor, and leaves. He does not say anything. He does not even look back at Subaru.

The door clicks quietly shut behind him. It would feel better if he had slammed it.

In the ensuing silence, Subaru lies naked on the table, alone amidst the shards of crumbling pottery and broken glass.

 

* * *

 

He takes to the streets in a daze, and realises too late that he’s not dressed for the January cold. Somewhere along the way, it begins to snow. He takes refuge in a small cafe.

Huddled over a steaming mug of hot chocolate, he thinks of Seishirou, of the blood and the bruises and the hurt of everything the man has done to him. He is struck, instead, by a particularly vivid memory of Kanazawa. Walking down the beach with fingers brushing, as if they would hold each other if not for the weight of history behind them. The rumble of thunder. The rain that came soon after. Racing each other back to the house, Seishirou merciless and smug with his longer legs and longer reach.

Unbidden, the memories come to him then, in a tide of unwanted emotion. Trading kisses on the front porch overlooking the sea, walking together under stars and neon lights, a Japanese edition of _Chicken Soup for the Soul,_ and being cradled like a child frightened by the night; sheets, the warmth of naked skin, gentle fingers, gentle hands; wine, and hotpot, and cigarettes, and sex; quiet conversations, quieter laughter— all the times he’d been wordlessly held in the silent cold, all the moments of absent tenderness they’d shared over the years.

At the end of it— the first memory returns again, tender and aching and soul-shattering: Seishirou, standing in the doorway at the top of those old wooden steps at Kanazawa, laughter in his eyes, waiting wordlessly for Subaru to catch up.

It hits him like a punch to the heart. He all but doubles over from the force of it.

“Sir? Are you alright, sir?”

“I’m alright,” he manages to say, and tosses a couple of bills onto the table, “I just need the gents.”

There’s a single bathroom in the cafe. Just a basin, a toilet, tissue dispensers— no stalls. He locks the door behind him.

In the privacy of the locked room, he turns the tap all the way to the right and splashes the icy water onto his face. He digs the heels of his palm hard into his eyes, watches the imprint of lights float over his field of vision. Then, he blinks the water from his lashes and straightens up.

He meets his own dead-eyed stare in the mirror. A surge of determination sweeps over him. He plants his hands on the counter, and leans over the sink to take a proper look at himself for the first time in years.

He— doesn’t typically examine himself like this. He— he admits that it had probably been because he did not want to face the ghost of his sister, at first, to face her accusing eyes as he grappled with feelings he did not understand— hate, unfamiliar and toxic in his chest like tar, and a buried, shameful lust. Then the years had gone by, bitter and cruel, until one day he’d looked into the mirror again, and a stranger had taken her place.

Losing his sister the second time had hurt just as indescribably as it had the first time. He’d refrained from looking into mirrors too closely after that.

And so, it is for the first time in a long while that he confronts the stranger in the mirror— traces the unfamiliar angles of his face, the sharp cheekbones and defined jawline. He looks at himself until his gaze catches on something odd, something… disquietingly familiar.

A familiar upturn to his nose.

A familiar shape in the dark, straight lines of his brows.

He looks harder at the arch of almond eyes, wide— _pretty_ — and the stranger suddenly begins to look more and more like his sister. No longer the splitting image, but she’s still there.

No.

 _He’s_ still there— the ghost of his sixteen-year-old self he’d thought he’d long outgrown, less some years of lost baby fat and lost weight, but there all the same under the blood and the bruises.

 _Here we are,_ he thinks, biting back the swell of bitter laughter, _back at square one._

He raises his fist, and shatters the image of his sixteen-year-old self.

 

 

 

There is blood dripping from his fingers.

He tells the barista that he fell in the bathroom, and writes a check for the broken mirror. He refuses when the barista tries to retrieve the first aid kit.

As he staggers out of a cafe for the second time in one day, he tries vainly to recall the pain, the violence, the times Seishirou had beaten him and degraded him and left him broken and used and unconscious on the floor. He realises that it’s been a long time since he’s been hurt like that. He reaches further back, the time he’d nearly been drowned and then been fucked until he bled, but the only vivid memory he has of that incident is being held in the aftermath. Desperately, he tries to recall the first time at the hotel, the way he’d been hurt so badly he’d been unconscious for days. It slips from him. It’s been seven years.

Finally, he reaches for the memory of the worst day of his life— petals against the night, prayer beads, breaking and clattering to the grass, blood on a white _shikifuku—_

The pain of it is distant and dulled.

The fog comes back with a vengeance after that.

 

 

 

He doesn’t have the spare key with him, but Seishirou opens the door when he pounds against it.

 _What happened to your_ hand?

He doesn’t quite register what he says in response, but he assumes it isn’t anything nice from the way that Seishirou’s eyes harden. Still, the man stands aside and gestures for him to come in. Subaru hesitates at the door. He still isn’t sure why he’s here.

_You’re not going anywhere in this snow— not dressed like that._

Seishirou sits him on the kitchen counter, and tends to the cuts on his knuckles. A few mirror shards fall into his lap as he does so. Subaru takes them into his palm, staring blankly, and vaguely registers the cold edges of it. He closes his palm. Seishirou curses and pries his fingers open to reveal blood— _I would appreciate that you not undo the hard work I’ve put in to piece you back together_ , he’s saying— and Subaru leans over to kiss him again.

Seishirou turns his face aside, frowning.

Subaru laughs, and then there are words spilling from his mouth without his consent, hateful and cruel and unkind— words that he cannot believe he could ever utter, words that he cannot even repeat to himself in the confines of his own mind. He doesn’t know where the words are coming from— somewhere beyond the fog that has settled over his limbs and his mind, he thinks. It spews from him in a fountain of hateful vitriol. At some point, Seishirou slams the tweezers down on the counter, and gets his coat on. Subaru catches his wrist at the door. Seishirou grabs his shoulder, spinning them both around, and shoves Subaru back against the wall.

Subaru slaps him.

Seishirou takes a deep breath, turning away to collect himself, and Subaru laughs.

_Don’t you remember what you did to me the last time?_

When Seishirou turns and slams his hand through the wall by Subaru's head, the fog scatters into nothing. Subaru stiffens, shocked into paralysis beneath coldly dispassionate eyes, as he returns abruptly to his own body.

"Antagonising me isn't going to do anything," Seishirou is saying quietly, "Not today."

He bends his head down. Subaru stares wide-eyed across his shoulder, deer in the headlights, as he begins to mouth slowly down the side of his throat. He feels— everything is suddenly too much— too bright and too clear and every touch to his skin too textured— everything oversensitive and he can’t—

With a whimper, he involuntarily turns his throat up as Seishirou comes back to the underside of his jaw. The man's movements are leisurely and languid, wetted lips dangerously gentle and calm demeanour almost mockingly threatening.

"Ask me," he murmurs into Subaru's neck, "Ask me to give you what you need."

His quiet breath trails tantalisingly up over Subaru's ear.

"Ask me to hurt you."

He bites down— Subaru tosses his head back with a cry.

"Ask me to _fuck_ you."

A helpless moan slips free as the filthy word trails seductive fingers down his spine and squeezes low in his abdomen.

"Stop," he says weakly.

"Why? You seemed to enjoy it from the _very first time_ I did what I did to you, from that time in the hotel— do you remember that? You seemed to enjoy it when I made you _come."_

Despite himself, the reminder of it sends a thrill down to the throbbing place between his legs. “I didn’t _want_ what you did to me,” he protests in a whisper, trying to curb the mortifying arousal and the sensations overwhelming his oversensitive body, his oversensitive mind, “I can’t help how my body reacts, but I didn’t have a choice in what you did to me.“

“You followed me when I led you there, didn't you?” Seishirou asks, “You had fifteen minutes to fight me while we walked there. We even had lunch there at the hotel, before going up to the room. Why didn't you stop me?"

"I was just a _boy_ , I didn't know that you would—“

“Perhaps you didn’t,“ Seishirou cuts in, “But what about the times after that?”

He opens his mouth, but has no answer.

Seishirou lets it sink for a moment before speaking again.

"Your wards are complex but never complex enough to keep me out," he continues, fingering the inverted pentacle on the back of Subaru's hand, "You know that these will get me past them but you do nothing to counter them even though you could if you tried."

"Stop."

"You struggle when I hold you down, but you always come when I fuck you, and you always want to be held after you come.”

“I _don’t_ —“

Another hand slams through the wall on the other side of Subaru's head. Subaru flinches back at the loudness and the suddenness of it.

For a long moment, there is only the sounds of their mingled breathing. Seishirou looks _furious_ and— and something else that he cannot identify, some emotion he cannot parse that draws his brows together and tightens the skin around his eyes. Then, the moment passes. Seishirou’s face softens into something almost like remorse.

“Perhaps,” he begins quietly, “there have been times that I have— _influenced_ your choices in the way things have played out. Perhaps, if I hadn’t— if I hadn’t done the things I’d done, you wouldn’t have chosen the way things are _exactly_ as they are now. Perhaps.” Seishirou’s voice turns abruptly hard, “But don’t you dare tell me that you don’t want any of this. Don’t you _dare.”_

Subaru can’t help the quiet sob.

When Seishirou kisses him for the first time since he'd come in, he doesn't resist the way Seishirou coaxes his mouth open to ply him with tongue and gentle teeth. It’s wet and warm and— too much, _too much._ It goes straight to his belly. His mind is a mess. His body is trembling, weak. He doesn't resist when elegant fingers slip ever so slightly under his waistband and curl over his naked hip. He doesn't resist the other large palm when it firmly cups his jaw to guide him into the kiss.

Then Seishirou steps away.

"Ask."

"Seishirou—"

_"Ask."_

Subaru stands helplessly with his back to the wall, literally backed into a corner. But now that Seishirou has stepped away and he can move forward, he finds that he'd likely be unable to stand without it to prop him up.

"Does it please you to see me reduced to this?" he demands, but it comes out more helpless than bitter, "Why are you doing this now? You’ve never been much concerned with what _I_ wanted, so _why_ —"

He stifles the rest before it can slip out unheeded.

Just out of arms reach, Seishirou watches him, dispassionate as always but strangely exuding some identifiable aura; he does not respond. Subaru feels as if he has disappointed him, and is horrified to discover just how much the thought matters.

"I—" his words come out in an almost-sob, "I _can't. Please,_ Seishirou-san. Don't make me."

Seishirou looks over him with a considering eye. His gaze is sharp as always, unintentionally piercing with no lenses to dilute it.

"Prideful," he murmurs.

He turns and walks slowly away, steps measured and deliberate. Subaru does not think for a moment that he has been dismissed or forgotten. Seishirou stops by the kitchen island, takes a cigarette from the pack lying on the counter.

"Undress," he says in a louder voice, lighting the cigarette, "Kneel with your palms against the floor."

Subaru presses his thighs together and clings more desperately to the wall for support.

"No."

"Then you can leave."

Subaru closes his eyes as Seishirou continues to smoke his cigarette. He keeps his hands clenched tightly against the wall to stop them from moving. The only thing keeping him standing is the hard wall behind him and he focuses on that, the texture and the feel and the solid presence of it against his back. After some moments, he hears Seishirou lightly tapping his cigarette against a porcelain ashtray.

He needs this, he knows then, needs the pain and the humiliation. He doesn’t need pride. What is his pride when giving it up will banish the insanity that has so suddenly overcome him? He has little else left. He will not let Seishirou take his sanity too.

With an anguished moan, he lets go of the wall, and begins to undress.

When he is finally kneeling naked on the floor, Seishirou turns around. There is no heat in his gaze when he draws his eyes down from green eyes past creamy ribs to slender, quivering thighs. Somehow that only makes Subaru feel more objectified than if there'd been blatant appraisal on his face.

Seishirou turns away once more, retreating into the bedroom without a backward glance. The command to follow is unspoken but unmistakable.

"Crawl," he tosses offhandedly over his shoulder.

Subaru's fingers tighten to fists. He can see Seishirou standing by the bed through the darkened doorway, watching and waiting expectantly. He fights down the urge to burst into angry tears because that would defeat the purpose of _everything._ Then again, here he is now: kneeling on the cold hard floor, naked with his clothes folded neatly by his side, completely and utterly bared to the world. He hasn't got anything left in his empty hands and the feeling is a cold one.

Seishirou sighs, the sound of it strangely weary.

"I'm giving you a choice," he says quietly, resignedly, "You can crawl here. And if you do, I will strip the meat from your very bones and suck the marrow from what remains. I will take _everything_."

A pause.

"Or you can leave," he continues, "You can leave and keep the tattered remains of whatever you still have."

There is nothing left in his empty hands but crumbling pottery and broken glass.

He crawls.

 

* * *

 

In the aftermath, he feels Seishirou roll off of him, his own scream still ringing in his ears from the orgasm that had torn him asunder. He lies there with his eyes closed. He focuses on the pain in his body, the humiliation and the degradation he’d just been subjected to.

“Look at me,” Seishirou whispers.

He does.

Seishirou lies on his side, propped up on one elbow. There is an inscrutable look on his face. Then, slowly, Seishirou reaches for one of Subaru’s hands, raises it, and kisses the scar on the back of it.

Subaru closes his eyes.

 _I’m still in love with him,_ he realises— and his world falls away in pieces.

“What do you want?”

Subaru’s voice comes out flat. He barely recognises it himself.

When he receives no response, he opens his eyes to look at Seishirou. The man is frowning at him, looking confused and bewildered. He feels a little irritation at the sight but even that slips quickly out of his grasp.

“What more could you want from me, Seishirou-san?” he asks emptily, “You’ve already taken everything.”

Seishirou opens his mouth, as if to say something, but eventually closes it. He doesn’t say anything, anything at all. Subaru can’t help the hollow feeling in his chest. Even now, when he has given everything, when he’s cold and empty and naked— this man has nothing in return. _Give me something,_ he wants to whisper, _Give me anything to hold on to. I can’t do this any longer. There’s not enough left of me to hold me down, and I don’t know what to do._

Subaru knows that whatever it was between them had always been painfully one-sided. He’s never felt like he had the right to ask for anything in return, but this time he can’t help but feel that he finally given it all. He doesn’t have anything left to give. He has absolutely nothing, not even the semblance of sanity he had so eagerly gambled his pride away to regain, and the reality of that is so pathetic that it’s almost funny.

The slightly hysterical laughter surprises even himself.

Seishirou reaches for him.

He turns his back, pulling away from Seishirou’s touch— and goes to sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, but things are only going to go downhill from here on out. I am breaking my own fucking heart. WELL DONE. I PLAYED MYSELF. Also, I am trying to write a better summary for the monstrosity that this fic is turning out to be, but I cannot even begin to encapsulate what this story is about. (What _is_ it about? I don't even know myself.)


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